
Qass 

Book 



LIVES 



OF THE 



CHIEF FATHERS OF NEW ENGLAND. 

The Lord our God "be with us, as he was with our fa- 
thers ; let him not leave us, nor forsake us 

1 KiTSQS 8 : 57. 

VOL. I. 

^ < » » > ■ , ... 



v 



^ 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 



Veneration for departed worth is a sentiment so 
natural and proper, that he who is incapable of feel- 
ing it, must be regarded as hopelessly ungenerous and 
ignoble. The remembrance of the just is a blessing 
to them that cherish it. Such memories awaken a 
pure ambition ; and lead to the virtuous resolve to em- 
ulate, to equal, to exceed the patterns we admire. 
The contemplation of exemplary goodness gives life 
to magnanimous thoughts, and beneficent purposes. 
It is wise to multiply these lessons, and to surround 
ourselves with these incentives of excellence. The 
Egyptian graced his habitation with the embalmed 
persons of his ancestry, hoping that thus their merits 
might linger in the abode of their descendants. The 
Grecian multiplied the statues of those who had been 
distinguished for public or private virtues, believing 
that the mute eloquence of the sculptured stone would 
not plead in vain for that respect which ends in imita- 
tion. So too let us adorn our dwellings with the 
memorials of the great and good. Let them be em- 
balmed with the odorous spices of grateful remem- 
brance. Let the very walls of our houses, garnished 
with their portraitures and the pictured story of their 
deeds, summon us to a righteous emulation. The 



IV INTRODUCTION. 

trophies of Miltiades would not suffer Themistocles to 
sleep. 

As for us, whose homes are on the soil of New 
England, we need not go far from our birthplace, to 
find the most illustrious examples to be studied and 
copied. Since the days of the apostles, there have 
been no worthier patterns of Christian character and 
primitive piety than the Puritans, to whom we are 
indebted for all that gives our people any superiority 
in any respect over other nations of the earth. Not 
that we are to practice an indiscriminate and idolatrous 
veneration. " There are no errors which are so likely 
to be drawn into precedent, and therefore none which 
it is so necessary to expose, as the errors of persons 
who have a just title to the gratitude and admiration 
of posterity. In politics, as in religion, there are de- 
votees who show their reverence for a departed saint, 
by converting his tomb into a sanctuary for crime." 
But though the Puritans had their faults and failings, 
what sort of moral appetite must that be which fastens 
upon and devours these unsavory scraps, and neglects 
all that is pure and wholesome in their character 1 
If there be any sore spot in their example, these flesh- 
flies detect it with unerring instinct, and dart upon it 
with a ravenous delight. He who can see nothing 
in the sun but its spots must be worse than blind ; for 
while his eye gazes with morbid intensity on darkness, 
he has no vision for that which is bright and fair. 

Luther has said that " evil comes of good :" which 
remark accords with the Rabbinical proverb, " Vine- 
gar is the son of wine." And we find that even some 



INTRODUCTION. 

of the descendants of the Puritans have proved so de- 
generate as, vi^ith filial impiety, to blacken and revile 
the memory of their sires. Foul and unnatural deed ! 
How doth it react to the degradation and infamy of 
its base perpetrators ! " There is no readier way," 
says Tillotson, "for a man to bring his own worth 
into question, tlian by endeavoring to detract from the 
worth of other men." And this is especially the case 
when the slanderer is vilifying his own progenitors. 
What can be more odious than to see the child defa- 
cing and polluting the sepulchre of his fathers ? The 
only disgrace he can fix upon them, is that of having 
generated a monster so contemptible as himself. Such 
recreant and apostate natures usually exceed all oth- 
ers in the avidity and malignity with which they tra- 
duce the sainted dead. They do this for the reason 
Dryden gives, and he must have known as being one 
himself, 

"For renegadoes, who ne'er turn by halvea, 
Are bound in conscience to be double knaves." 

The mists which obscure the sun are exhaled by his 
own fervent beams. Envy and detraction are the 
shadows which ever follow shining merit. The ca- 
lumniators of the Puritans serve as the shades in the 
picture, which render the lights more distinct and 
vivid. The fair fame of the Puritans shines the more 
luminous, when contrasted with the dark dispositions 
of their slanderers. 

It is but justice to the pious dead to vindicate their 
good name, which, as Cicero says, is the appropriate 
possession of the departed. And justice to ourselves 
1# 



VI INTRODUCTION. 

requires, that we should preserve untarnished the 
reputation of our fathers, so that we may feel its full 
influence to quicken our own virtues, and to stimulate 
them to greater activity and fruiifulness. Certain it 
is, that they will be the most likely to partake of the 
excellencies of the Puritans, who most deeply revere 
them. 

In different ages there have arisen men, too great 
or too good for the times in which they lived : — men, 
like Israel's martyred prophets, of whom the world 
was not worthy. They have strode so far in advance 
of their cotemporaries, that as Coleridge said of Mil- 
ton, they dwarfed themselves in the distance. Bitter 
scorn and bitterer wrath was their portion while they 
lived. 

And after they are gone, other generations sweep 
by, till the same venerable worthies are again almost 
lost from view in the dim perspective of the past. 
Then are their names again decried, because they 
stopped where they did. The most distinguished of 
living British essayists has said with a just severity; — 
" It is too much that the benefactors of mankind, after 
having been reviled by the dunces of their own gener- 
ation for going too far, are to be reviled by the dunces 
of the next generation for not going far enough." 

The world shows its unworthiness of these good 
men, either by forgetting their virtues as soon as pos- 
sible : or else by remembering their names only to 
traduce them. Thus thanklessly and harshly has it 
dealt with our pilgrim fathers. But, blessed be the 
Lord ! there are not wanting those, who, like " Old 



INTRODUCTION. VH 

Mortality" among- the trraves of the Covenanters, with 
chisel in hand, revisit the resting-place of our Puritan 
sires, raising up the fallen n)onuments ; removing the 
encroaching mosses; and, with pious care, retouching 
the fading inscriptions which the ceaseless stream of 
time is wearing away. 

Such a pleasing task of filial piety and reverent love 
is before us in the present undertaking. Nor doubt 
we, that the work is well pleasing unto God, who is 
himself, in his providence, the Vindicator of their 
wisdom and zeal ; and whose Word has taught us, 
that the memory of the just is blessed, and that the 
righteous must be had in everlasting remembrance. 

These considerations have induced the Publishing 
Committee of the Massachusetts Sabbath School So- 
ciety to prepare a series of biographical sketches of 
some of the distinguished men, who were God's in- 
struments in making this country what it is. These 
volumes will collect, and present in one view, every 
thing which relates to them that can be recovered from 
scattered confusion and from oblivion. It is intended 
that this exhibition shall bring out the characters, 
actions, sufferings and principles of these remarkable 
men, in such form as may interest and profit the gen- 
eral reader, and not be unuseful to such as may be 
studious of the early history of our country. 

The Committee have observed with pain, that there 
is, in some quarters, a disposition to subject the mem- 
ory of the Puritans to what is sometimes significantly 
called ' ' cavalier treatment. ' ' The best defence which 
can be made of these worthies is to show them as 



Vlll INTRODUCTION 

they were. Could such an exhibition be made to the 
life, it is certain that it would have the same dispers- 
ing effect upon their detractors, as the appearance of 
Cromwell's unconquered " Ironsides" had upon the 
runaways of Naseby, of Preston, and of Worcester. 

It is hoped that these volumes will not only find a 
place in all our Sabbath school libraries, but may ob- 
tain a general circulation among the young men and 
young women of our land. It is believed that the 
contemplations of these noble examples wiil be found 
among the best means of strengthening the minds, 
enriching the memories, and settling the principles, of 
the young. The moral beauty of the character of the 
Puritans consist chiefly in this, — they ivere men of 
principle. This made them deliberate in resolving, 
and inflexible in performing. The "noble grace of 
decision" shone conspicuously in their lives; they 
were decided for truth, for conscience, for God. It 
was a rich gift of the Holy Ghost, and enabled them 
for a work in which all oth^r adventurers must have 
failed. 

May God bless this undertaking, so that it may help 
to revive in power and purity the remnants of the pi- 
ety and spirit of the pilgrims which yet linger among 
us. May it help to increase the multitudes which, 
like the Puritans of old, have gone up, through much 
tribulation, from the footstool to the throne ! 



THE LIFE 



OF 



JOHN COTTON. 



BY Xi' W. M'CLURE, 



WrUten for the Massachusetts Sabbath School Society, and 
revised by the Committee of Publication. 



BOSTON: 

MASSACHUSETTS SABBATH SCHOOL SOCIETY, 

Depository, No. 13 Cornhill. 

1846. 



Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1846, 
By CHRISTOPHER C. DEAN, 

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of Massachusetts. 



PREFACE. 



The difficulty of preparing a work of this nature 
can only be conceived of by one who has tried it. 
The mere collecting of the scattered materials, dis- 
persed in the obscurest cotners, as they usually are, is 
a great labor. It is a greater toil to arrange them in 
due order, when once they are collected. The set- 
tling of doubtful and contradictory statements is often 
a tedious and perplexing business. And then comes 
the writing, which the author must accomplish as he 
can. The only merit which this little book can claim, 
is laborious accuracy bestowed upon a worthy subject. 
For its faults in other respects, there can hardly be 
any remedy. For, to apply here a rhyme of Presi- 
dent Oakes, 

"They thai can Cotton's goodness well display, 
Must be as good as he :— but who are ihey ?" 

In prosecuting the design of the Publishing Com- 
mittee of the Massachusetts Sabbath School Society, 
it is evident that the distinctive principles of the Puri- 
tans must come under review. In order that these 
might be more completely presented, they are dis- 
cussed somewhat fully in a few chapters devoted to 
that object. Accordingly, in this volume, will be found 
a chapter occupied with an account of the nature and 



Xll PREFACE. 

origin of Puritanism, in which our fathers are vindi- 
cated from the charge of schism and sinful division of 
the Church. Another chapter delineates the main 
features of the Congregational Church government. 
Another still, exhibits the merits of Congregational- 
ism. 

May God grant wisdom to all who may take part 
in this attempt to revive the memory of the patriarchs 
of our land ; and give to the readers grace to profit by 
their holy example. 

" A lift may find him who a sermon flies." 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 



CHAPTER I. 

His parentage. Residence at the University. Conversion. 

The man whose life and principles will now be 
represented, from the vast influence he exer- 
cised in his own time, and, consequently, upon 
all following times, has been fitly called the 
Patriarch of New England. Boston, especially, 
is indebted to him for much more than hs name. 
He found it but little better than a woody wil- 
derness ; and he left it a flourishing town, a sort 
of Jerusalem of the West. 

John Cotton was a native of Derby, on the 
river Derwent, in England. He was born on 
the fourth of December, in the year 15S5. He 
was descended of ' gentle blood.' His parents 
were persons in easy circumstances, and able to 
provide him with the necessaries for a good edu- 
cation. The father, Roland Cotton, a lawyer 
by profession, was distinguished, as well as the 
mother, by a solid and fervid piety. The child, 
VOL. I. 2 



14 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

thus brought forth and brought up, did no dis- 
credit to his training. His youth, unstained by 
follies, gave no occasion for reproach in after 
years. It is pleasing to consider a person, who, 
from the cradle to the grave, lived a long life 
without spot or blame, other than what arose 
from the mistakes of those around him, or those 
errors of his own which serve to associate him 
with weak humanity, but not with its vices or 
its crimes. It is true, that, at certain times, 
amid the tempests of passion and prejudice, 
much mire and dirt was cast upon his charac- 
ter, but none of it would adhere. It all fell off 
again, and left his reputation unsullied as ever. 

He was admitted to Trinity College, Cam- 
bridge, at the early age of thirteen. His father 
who had never had many clients before, from 
that time had them in abundance. The son, 
who had, in consequence, a very liberal main- 
tenance, and w^ho also had a watchful eye to 
discern the ways of divine providence, was 
thereby led to say : — " God kept me at the uni- 
versity !" 

At this ancient seminary, the nursing mother 
of so many eminent Puritan ministers, he spent 
fifteen studious years, till he became learned in 
all the wisdom of that age of erudite scholars 
and deep divines. He was prevented from ob- 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 15 

taining a fellowship in his college, only by rea- 
son of embarrassments growing out of the 
construction of expensive buildings for its use. 

He was then chosen a fellow of Emmanuel 
College, after a severe examination, which he 
triumphantly sustained. He was examined with 
special rigor in the Hebrew language. He was 
tested more particularly upon the latter part of 
the third chapter of Isaiah, which consists of an 
inventory of the fineries of the haughty daugh- 
ters of Zion, such as might well astonish a 
modern Parisian milliner. This passage, which 
contains more unusual and perplexing terms 
than any other in the Old Testament, occasioned 
no trouble to our ardent scholar, who was able 
to converse in that tongue. Hebrew literature 
was much cultivated among the Puritan divines, 
who gave especial attention to those three lan- 
guages in which it was stated on the cross, that 
Jesus of Nazareth was King of the Jews. And 
yet the famed Erasmus, though reputed in his 
day to be " the most Greek among the Grecians, 
and the most Latin among the Latins," and 
thouorh so used to discourse in the latter Ian- 
guage as to forget his mother tongue, gave up 
the attempt to acquire the Hebrew in utter dis- 
couragement. This study, in which Luther so 
much delighted, found many expert proficients 



16 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 



among the spiritual fathers of New England. 
Nearly all the first ministers of Massachusetts 
cultivated it : and some very singular anecdotes 
are preserved to illustrate their familiarity with 
that language, which, as John Eliot said, " it 
pleased our Lord Jesus Christ to make use of 
when he spake from heaven unto Paul." Some 
of the laymen bestowed great attention upon it. 
Thus Governor Bradford, who had thoroughly 
mastered some four or five other languages, 
studied the Hebrew most of all ; "because," as 
he elegantly said, " he would see with his own 
eyes the ancient oracles of God in their native 
beauty !" 

In the same distinguished College where he 
gained his fellowship, Mr. Cotton afterwards 
became Head Lecturer ; then Dean, an officer 
charged to attend to the deportment and disci- 
pline of the students ; and Catechist, an employ- 
ment of chief note in the old conventual schools. 
He was also Tutor to numerous scholars, by 
whom he was held in the highest estimation as 
a teacher. 

While occupied thus usefully, he was much 
honored and admired for the strength and readi- 
ness of his mind, and for the vast extent of his 
reading. The sermons, which he occasionally 
preached in the University, were pompous ha- 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 



17 



rangues, stuffed with a huge mass of learning 
and soaring conceits, according to the taste of 
the "vain wits" of that seat of science. These 
ostentatious displays made him very popular 
with that class of men, who delighted in such 
parades of learned lore, as much as they dis- 
tasted the plain preaching of the humbling doc- 
trines of the cross. Cotton was then one of 
their own sort, being himself of that lamentably 
numerous class who undertake to preach the 
gospel of Christ without having personally felt 
its life and power in the heart. 

He first distinguished himself by a funeral 
discourse for Dr. Some, Master of Peter House, 
in which he flourished away with so much arti- 
ficial originality, affected eloquence and " orato- 
rious beauty," that he came to be regarded as 
the Xenophon of the University, and the special 
favorite of the muses. Some time after, he de- 
livered a University sermon in St. Mary's 
Church, which gained the high applause of the 
academical pedants, who looked only for a grand 
exhibition of what the preacher could do to show 
off himself, rather than for a presentation of 
"Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumbling 
block, and unto the Greeks foolishness ; but unto 
them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, 
2=^ 



18 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of 
God." 

But the Lord had other employment for this 
"chosen vessel." He who had dwelt so long 
among those halls of science as one of her most 
assiduous devotees, began at last to feel the 
higher claims of religion. 

In those days there was at Cambridge an em- 
inent and godly divine, Rev. William Perkins, 
whose name was long precious among our fa- 
thers, one of whom made this epigram upon 
him, in allusion to a certain natural defect ; 

" Though nature thee of thy right hand bereft, 
Right well thou writest with thy hand that's left." 

This good and able man was sound in the 
faith, and deep in the experience of the great 
doctrines of the gospel. His ministrations, so 
searching to the heart and so rousing to the 
conscience, were blessed to the conversion of 
many who became some of the brightest lights 
of their age. Among others, Mr. Cotton was 
much wrought upon by his faithful exhibition of 
the truth. But the young and aspiring scholar, 
fearing to become engaged in the pursuit of per- 
sonal religion, lest it should hinder him in the 
studies he was ambitiously following, suppressed, 
so far as he could, the motions and stirrings of 
his mind. In the pride of intellect, and the lust 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 19 

of literary distinction, he resisted the strivings 
of the Holy Spirit. For a while, he succeeded 
in stifling the still small voice of conviction, till 
one day walking in the fields, he heard the bell 
tollincT the death-knell of the devout Mr. Per- 
kins. At this, Mr. Cotton secretly rejoiced; 
and began to congratulate himself, that he should 
no more be troubled by him, who had, as he 
said, " laid siege to and beleaguered his heart." 

But this selfish satisfaction at such a riddance 
soon became a cause of great spiritual distress. 
It dwelt constantly upon his mind as an aggra- 
vated sin, that he had thus exulted at the pros- 
pect of being freed, at such a price, from divine 
incitements and restraints. God made it " an 
effectual means of convincing and humbling him 
in the sight and sense of the natural enmity that 
is in man's nature against God." 

In this state of mind, he heard a sermon from 
Dr. Sibbs, a man of great note among the Puri- 
tans in the time of the first James. This sermon 
was upon the nature and necessity of regenera- 
tion. It first showed the state of the unregener- 
ate, and the misery of those who have no 
righteousness but that of the moral virtues. 
Under this discourse, Mr. Cotton felt all his 
false hopes and self-righteous confidences failing 
him. He found the truth of what the Bible 



20 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

taught him, that he was a sinner in the sight of 
God, — that he was wholly and helplessly de- 
praved, and utterly lost beyond the power of 
recovering himself. For near three years, he 
was fainting under the burden of desponding 
thoughts, feeling that he had willfully withstood 
the means of grace and the offers of mercy which 
God had extended to him. At length the barbed 
arrow, which so long had rankled in his heart, 
was plucked away. Through the same wound 
from which the bloody drops of contrition had 
flowed, the healing grace of Jesus was infused. 
This comfort appears to have been ministered to 
his soul under the preaching of the same worthy 
Dr. Sibbs ; between whom and the happy con- 
vert there ever after subsisted " a singular and 
constant love," as between a spiritual father and 
his son in the faith. 

The conversion of Mr. Cotton was of that 
primitive, orthodox stamp, which has always 
produced the best sort of Christians. There is 
reason to suspect that many who are in the habit 
of speaking of such a change in terms of levity 
and unbelief, would inwardly rejoice if they 
could be assured of undergoing the same moral 
renovation before they shall be summoned to the 
bar of God. There is something in such an 
experience which commends itself even to the 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 21 



conscience of the scoffer and profane. In the 
case of Mr. Cotton it was no rash and reasonless 
excitement : but the result of years of anxious 
inquiry and mental conflict. It occurred when 
he was at the maturity of his powers and in 
their highest state of discipline and development. 
It was a solid work, on a firm foundation, by the 
Almighty hand : and therefore was it a lasting 
monument of grace. The subject of it, at the 
^ime, was not far from twenty-seven years of 
age. 

Ere long he was called once more to fill the 
old stone pulpit of St. Mary's venerable church. 
A numerous auditory of the University men, 
attracted by his high reputation, thronged the 
place. These were hearers, who, as the excel- 
lent John Norton said of them, and he knew 
them well, " prefer the Muses before Moses, and 
taste Plato more than Paul, and relish the Orator 
of Athens far above the Preacher of the Cross." 
They were confidently expecting to be regaled 
with the heaped up quotations, the philosophical 
abstractions, the scholastic subtleties, and rhe- 
torical ornaments, by which the preachers on 
those occasions were wont to hold up to admira- 
tion, not their Master, but themselves. When 
Mr. Cotton arose, the hum of approbation, which 
used to greet a popular speaker, resounded 



22 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

through the temple. But their expectation was 
destined to be disappointed. The discourse was 
upon the subject o{ repentance, and was enunci- 
ated from a heart which had freshly felt the 
power of the theme. It was a plain, pungent, 
practical address, directly aimed at the con- 
science of the hearers. The countenances of 
his audience betrayed their discontent ; in token 
of which, they pulled down their shovel-caps 
over their faces, and listened in sullen mood. 

The poor preacher, discouraged with this cold 
reception of his zealous endeavors for their good, 
retired to his chambers with some sad thoughts 
of heart. He had not been long alone, when 
Dr. John Preston, then a fellow of Queen's 
College, and of great esteem in the University, 
knocked at his door. This person, like so many 
others, had repaired to the sermon, with his ears 
itching to hear a splendid literary performance. 
For a while, he manifested his vexation in every 
way he could : but ere the close, he was " cut to 
the heart" by the sword of the Spirit. Making 
an errand of borrowing a book, he called on Mr. 
Cotton, with whom he had not been acquainted. 
His wounded soul could not keep silence ; and 
he sought those spiritual succors which God 
blessed to the peace of his mind. This man too 
became a powerful preacher of the gospel, and a 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 23 

mighty man of renown among the Calvinistic 
doctors of that age of giant minds. This nota- 
ble seal of his ministry consoled Mr. Cotton for 
the manner in which his first evangelical sermon 
was received by the many. He never regretted 
that he had cast his ostentatious ways aside, and 
had sought only to approve himself unto God. 
Some of the more religious divines prayed him 
to " persevere in that good way of preaching," 
which, by the grace of God, he effectually did. 
How true is the remark of the excellent Thomas 
Fuller, " It is easier and better for us to please 
one God, than many men, with our sermons." 
Between Mr. Cotton and Dr. Preston there was 
formed one of those most profitable Christian 
friendships, which must outlast earth and heaven- 
There are no good men, but others are the better 
for them. 



24 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 



CHAPTER II. 

Settlement at Boston in Old England. Obstacles to Selileuient. 
Spiritual Conflicts. Arminian Controversy. Marriage. Non- 
Conformity. 

When Mr. Cotton was about twenty-eight years 
of age, he was invited by the people of Boston, 
in Lincolnshire, to settle in the ministry among 
them. Old Boston, whose chief honor now is, 
that she imparted her name to her cisatlantic 
daughter, was indebted for it to Botolph, an an- 
cient Saxon saint ; the name Botolph's town, 
having been, in time, contracted to its present 
form. In that place, Mr. Cotton labored many 
years in the pastoral office, exerting a wonderful 
influence upon the character of the people. We 
read in Burke's famous speech made long after- 
wards on American affairs, the odd quotation 
from an old song ; — 

Solid men of Boston, make no long orations, 
Solid men of Boston, drink no strong potations. 

I am ready to believe that this character for so- 
lidity, for brevity of speech, and for observing 
the " holy dictate of spare temperance," may be 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 25 

owing to the labors of this man of God, leaving 
their impress upon the descendants of his parish- 
ioners there, as I doubt not they have done here. 

Mr. Cotton's settlement was not without some 
difficulty. The church-warden, with the better 
sort of people, desired that he should be their 
pastor. But the mayor, with the looser class, 
had procured from Cambridge another candidate 
more to their minds. When the election came 
to be held under the charter, the votes were found 
to be equally divided. The mayor, having the 
casting vote, by some mistake gave it in favor 
of Mr. Cotton. The civic dignitary, mortified 
at his error, requested that the vote might be 
taken again. His request was complied with, 
and resulted as before, in an equal division. And 
now, strange to tell, the mayor made the same 
mistake, and again gave his casting vote in Mr. 
Cotton's favor. In great vexation, the blunder- 
ing magistrate insisted upon trying the vote for 
the third time ; but the people refused their con- 
sent. Thus the choice fell upon Mr. Cotton, 
through the unintended act of his most strenuous 
opposer. 

This obstruction being removed, there came 
another in the way. Dr. Barlow, the diocesan, 
understanding that the successful candidate was 
infected with Puritanism, tried to discourage his 

VOL. I. 3 



26 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

settlement. The prelate's only objection was, 
that Mr. Cotton was too young a man to be set 
over such a numerous and factious people. The 
young man had so modest an opinion of himself, 
that he was satisfied with the objection, and pro- 
posed to go back to the University. But some 
of his supporters, understanding, as good Mr. 
Norton tells us, " that one Simon Bibby was to 
be spoken with, who was near to the bishop, they 
presently charmed him ; and so the business 
proceeded without further trouble, and Mr. Cot- 
ton was admitted into the place after their manner 
in those days." It looks suspicious in this case, 
that the charmers operated upon the said Simon 
Bibby, by means of unlawful spells, perchance 
mingling the potency of simony and bibificatio7i. 
But whatever the nature of their enchantments 
may have been, Mr. Cotton cannot be charged 
with any knowledge of their proceedings. 

About this time he was deeply exercised with 
spiritual troubles, even as his Master was sub- 
jected to temptation at the beginning of his pub- 
lic ministry. There is much truth in Luther's 
saying, " that three things make a divine ; med- 
itation, supplication, and temptation." It is 
probable that few ministers have ever been ex- 
tensively useful in the Church of God, without 
first passing through severe conflicts of mind 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 27 

against doubts, and fears, and unbelief; before 
coming to the settled enjoyment of the consola- 
tions and supports of the gospel. Taught both 
by sterner and by sweeter experience, they learn 
how to guide others through similar spiritual 
difficulties- It is thus that they become "able to 
comfort them which are in any trouble, by the 
comfort wherewith they themselves are com- 
forted of God." 

Engrossed as he was in these severe mental 
trials, Mr. Cotton paid no heed to the parties 
and factions which disturbed the town. This 
sort of impartiality conciliated the good will of 
the people, when they saw that the salvation of 
his own soul was far more upon his thoughts, 
than the contentions and disputes around him. 

At that time, there was a Mr. Baron in the 
place, a man very skillful in his calling, as a 
physician, but who chiefly devoted his studies to 
the defence of Arminianism, which he main- 
tained on all occasions, with much acuteness and 
ability. To his constant conversation, Mr. Cot- 
ton silently listened, till he "had learned, at 
length, where all the great strength of the doctor 
lay." Having mastered all Mr. Baron's scruples 
and objections, and, avoiding all those expres- 
sions and phrases of others, which afforded that 
gentleman any advantage in debate, Mr. Cotton 



28 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

began publicly to preach the doctrine of God's 
eternal election ; the effectual calling of the sin- 
ner by irresistible grace ; and the certain perse- 
verance of saints, so that they shall not fall 
from a state of grace, either totally or finally. 
The result was, that the adverse disputant 
desisted from all further debate ; Arminianism 
died quite away, without struggle or convulsion, 
" and all matters of religion were carried on 
calmly and peaceably." 

When he had resided at his parish about half 
a year, he visited Cambridge, to take his degree 
of Bachelor of Divinity. On this occasion, he 
added largely to his reputation, by a much ad- 
mired sermon to the clergy, from the text ; " Ye 
are the salt of the earth ; but if the salt have lost 
his savor, wherewith shall it be salted ? " He 
also distinguished himself by his skill in a pub- 
lic disputation, held in the schools for the purpose 
of proving himself qualified for his degree in 
divinity. He appeared to high advantage, though 
matched against a very keen debater, a Dr. 
Chappell ; afterwards Provost of Trinity College, 
in Dublin, and a strenuous advocate of Pelagian 
sentiments. After gathering these University 
laurels, Mr. Cotton returned to his parochial 
charge, where he enjoyed the high esteem of 
his flock. It is a remark of one of his fellow- 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 29 

laborers, " So God disposeth of the hearts of 
hearers, as that generally they are all open and 
loving to their preachers in their first times ; 
trials are often reserved until afterwards. Epi- 
phanius calleth the first year of Christ's minis- 
try, the acceptable year. — Young Peter girdeth 
himself, and walks whither he will; but old 
Peter is girded by another, and carried whither 
he would not." 

Being comfortably settled in his church, he 
married Elizabeth Horrocks, " an eminently vir- 
tuous gentlewoman.'' The day of their union, 
was ever memorable to him, upon another 
account ; for it was then, that he first received a 
comfortable assurance of God's love to his soul. 
The promises of grace and life, were sealed upon 
his heart by the Holy Spirit ; and this comfort 
con^tinued with him, in some happy measure, 
through the residue of his days. He would 
often say of the day of his espousals, " God made 
it a day of double marriage to me ! " for it was 
then that he obtained the blessed evidence of the 
marriage-union of his soul with Christ. 

His worthy companion was of great assistance 
to him in his ministry, in many respects; but 
especially in this, that she greatly promoted his 
usefulness among those of her own sex. The 
female members of the congregation, taking 
3# 



30 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

notice of her uncommon discretion and piety, 
would freely impart to her the state of their 
minds upon the subject of religion, acquainting 
her with their difficulties, and the points on 
which they stood in need of special counsel and 
instruction. The information she imparted to 
her husband, enabled him to adapt his public 
teaching to the wants of his hearers, and to ren- 
der it far more conducive to their spiritual good. 
If experience can prove any thing, it has abun- 
dantly proved that the judicious marriage of a 
clergyman greatly enhances his usefulness, and 
his estimation among his flock. It not only 
places him as " a family man," in close sympa- 
thy with the families of his flock, but it puts him in 
unexceptionable communication with the female 
portion of his charge. He thus obtains a suffi- 
ciently confidential knowledge of the condition 
of their minds, and also the opportunity of meet- 
ing their wants as a religious shepherd and 
guide. He in this manner becomes qualified to 
benefit them, far beyond what it would be prac- 
ticable or desirable to do by means of personal 
familiar intercourse. It is not without reason, 
that the Apostle gives repeated counsel, that 
every elder or parochial bishop, should be " the 
husband of one wife," neither more nor less. 
After Mr. Cotton had spent three years in 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 31 

Boston, his deep and devout studies brought him 
to a solemn conviction, that there were many- 
antiquated corruptions yet left unreformed in the 
national Church, with the practice of which he 
could not comply. From this time, he ceased to 
conform strictly to the Church of England, 
though he never voluntarily renounced its com- 
munion. 

The next chapter will be devoted to an account 
of the origin and nature of Puritanism, of which 
John Cotton was a staunch and uncompromising 
advocate. 



32 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 



CHAPTER III. 

Necessity of Controversy. Necessity of Reforming the Church, 
Romish corruption had taken away Christ's threefold office. 
Reformation in England restored his prophetical and priestly offi- 
ces. His kingly office not restored. Relics of Popery retained in 
the National Church. Puritans demand a complete Reformation. 
The principle involved Nehushtan. How the principles of 
Congregationalism are reached. Puritans persecuted. Their 
conduct under persecution. Take refuge in New England, 
Happy results of their removal. The charge of Schism triumph- 
antly retorted. The Massachusetts settlers no separatists. Laud, 
the great schismatic. His party were the separatists. Address 
from the Arbella. The "standing order" in New England no 
"sect." Puritanism as necessary now as in the days of our fa- 
thers. Appeal to the sons of the Pilgrims. 

The Puritans lived in an age of controversy. 
It was one of those periods when the vast sea of 
human opinions, convulsed under chafing winds 
and weltering waves, sweeps away many of the 
ancient landmarks, and often, by their removal, 
restores to their forgotten prominence such land- 
marks as are more ancient than they. It was a 
time when the earthquakes of political and re- 
ligious agitation disturbed every existing insti- 
tution ; throwing all their foundations out of 
course, that they might settle down at last upon 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 



33 



a basis more firm and square. Novel errors 
assailed old truths, and new truths grappled with 
antiquated errors. Perhaps there has never 
been a waking up of the human mind so general 
and so intense, as during that prolonged season 
of every kind of conflict. Such seasons must 
result in the advancement of truth, the progress 
of the human mind, and the improvement of the 
social state. Truth is ultimately, always stron- 
ger than her foes. Whatever may be the inci- 
dental evils of controversy, they are not so great 
as the evils it prevents or does away. It is a 
sharp remedy : but it is less painful than the 
diseases which it checks or heals. Such keen 
debate is only to be regretted as aUogether inju- 
rious, when it arrays the real friends of truth 
against each other in disputes about matters of 
inferior moment. In such cases the acrimony 
is usually in an inverse ratio to the importance 
of the point discussed. We may then exclaim 
in the language of the " facetious Fuller," allud- 
ing to a passage in the prophet Joel ; — " Alas I 
that men should have less wisdom than locusts, 
which, when sent on God's errand, did not 
thrust one another.'^ 

The necessity of reform in the church arose 
from its corruption. The leaven of this corrup- 
tion had begun to work even before the decease 



34 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

of the apostles. "^ And from that time, the 
spreading fermentation, diffusing itself through 
a long course of ages, at last leavened nearly the 
whole mass with the sour crudities of popery. 
No doubt, the church as yet unreformed was the 
true church, just as a tree decayed and maimed 
is still a true tree. But there was need that the 
dead limbs should be lopped down, and thre rotten 
wood cut out, and the eating funguses removed, 
and the encroaching mosses and other hurtful 
parasites scraped off, and the heterogeneous 
grafts pruned away. In short, there was much 
that wanted to be done, to restore the aged tree 
to a natural and vigorous growth, without am- 
putating any part that retained its health and 
soundness. It was not the design of the reform- 
ers to institute a new church : but to restore the 
integrity and purity of the old. And so far as 
it experienced such reformation, it is primitive, 
apostolical and catholic. 

Antichrist had so far prevailed, as greatly to 
interfere with the sole Headship of Christ in 
and over his church. His threefold office of 
chief Prophet, high Priest, and only King, had 
been dangerously and ruinously invaded. The 
light of the gospel, obscured by foggy ignorance 

* 2 Thesd. 2 : 7. 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 35 

and fuming- errors, had left the world in dark- 
ness. 

" O blindness of our earth- incrusled minds ! 
In what a midnight shade, what aombrous clouds 
Of error, are our souls immersed, when Thou, 
O Sun supreme, no longer deign'st to shine \" 

Welcome, thunder : — and welcome, hurri- 
cane ; — if those gloomy, fatal clouds are thereby- 
swept away. Luther, wake the storm, that the 
heavens may be cleared ; and the Sun of Right- 
eousness shine forth in his strength ! 

Christ's prophetical office, as the authoritative 
teacher of his Church, had been infringed by 
substituting the teachings and traditions of men 
in the place of his instructions. The pure doc- 
trines of his Word were no longer taught or 
understood. Dogmas wholly subversive of them 
were received instead. The grace which re- 
deems and renews the sinner, and which it is 
the main design of the Bible to inculcate, was 
lost sight of. Nothing was regarded but such 
matters as the efficacy of penance and indulgen- 
ces, the nature of purgatory and transubstantia- 
tion, and other things as contrary to the lessons 
of the Bible as Belial is to the Christ of God. 

The priestly office of Jesus, who is the only 
atoning sacrifice and the one Mediator between 
God and men, was no less invaded. The doc- 



36 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

trine that human merit can av^ail to purchase 
salvation displaced that most fundamental article 
of Christianity, that remission of sins and the 
gift of eternal life is through faith alone. It was 
held, that the sacraments of themselves had 
power to sanctify the recipients ; although the 
gospel denies all efficacy to forms and ceremo- 
nies, aside from the special influence of the Holy 
Spirit. Other mediators with God were set up 
by the side of Jesus, and even above him, in the 
affection and confidence of the worshipers. 
Full faith was given to all manner of absurd 
miracles, alledged to be wrought by hermits, and 
departed saints, and other celestial beings. 

" Such tales monastic fablers taught, 
Their kindred strain the minstrels caught; 
A web of finer texture they 
Wrought from the rich romantic lay." 

The virgin mother ; with a host of martyrs of 
all sorts, real and fabulous ; with numberless 
saints, many of them of uncertain existence, and 
others of very dubious sanctity ; with good spir- 
its and legendary angels : all these were relied 
upon in vows and prayers, to the injury of the 
Redeemer's exclusive right to stand and inter- 
cede between the sinner and his God. 

These infractions of his claims were attended 
by the usurpation of Christ's kingly office. In 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 37 

despite of his just prerogative to be supreme 
Head and Lawgiver in his own kingdom, men, 
assuming to act by his authority, dared to set 
aside his laws, and supplant them by ordinances 
of their own invention^ The Son of God had 
prescribed the terms of membership and commu- 
nion in the church which he had purchased \vith 
his own blood, and the mode of dealing with 
offenders : he had deposited with the church the 
sacred "power of the keys" wherewith to bind 
and loose : he had indicated the character of the 
officers under his government, and defined the 
nature of their authority and their duties : and 
he had stamped upon his worship and ordinances 
a simplicity becoming to their spiritual charac- 
ter. But a usurping hierarchy, engrossing a 
powder belonging to none but Christ, had over- 
turned all his enactments ; and instituted cere- 
monies and modes of worship utterly foreign to 
his will ; and imposed terms of communion and 
office in the church, totally repugnant to the 
divinely appointed order and discipline of the 
house of God. 

Such were the gross abuses and corruptions 
which had long prevailed, before the Protestant 
Reformation, — that moral equator of the world's 
history. It had become necessary to " prove all 
things ;" and rejecting the evil, to hold fast to 

VOL. I. 4 



38 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

that which is good. One of the old divines has 
correctly said : — " The reformers disclaimed only 
the ulcers and sores, not what was sound in the 
existing church." 

Now in England, during the reigns of the 
eighth Henry and some of his next successors, 
the needful reformation had advanced so far as 
to terminate the open infractions of Christ's pro- 
phetical and priestly offices. The doctrines he 
taught were openly professed once more : and 
free salvation by his atonement and intercession 
was now preached again. 

But here the work came to a stand. The in- 
vasions of the royal and legislative office of the 
Saviour were not redressed. The only altera- 
tion was a change of usurpers. The pope and 
his myrmidons were cast out only to make room 
for another set who claimed to be heads and law- 
makers to that city of God, which owed alle- 
giance and obedience in these matters to the 
Lord alone. 

The Anglican Church had never been thor- 
oughly purged from the remnants of popery. 
They, who first took the work in hand, were not 
able, in consequence of the premature death of 
the sixth Edward, to carry it on so far as they 
intended. And such as came after them strove 
rather, so far as they could, to retrace their steps 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 39 

toward the recently forsaken Babylon. It was 
not without reason that one of the divines of the 
Church of England exclaimed : — " What need 
hath reformation itself to be frequently reformed, 
seeing corruptions will so quickly creep there- 
into." That Church retained so much of the 
essence of popery, that Rome, to this day, has 
never given up the hope that her vagrant daugh- 
ter will yet return to her embraces. Says Ed- 
ward Weston, a Jesuit in the time of Henry 
VIII ; — " The English drove the pope out of the 
kingdom so hastily, that they forced him to leave 
his garments behind him : and now they put 
them on, and, like so many players acting their 
parts, they dance in them in a way of triumph." 
And the bloody Bonner, then Bishop of London, 
playfully remarked, in allusion to the supersti- 
tions which were retained ; — " If they sup of 
our broth, they will soon eat of our beef!" The 
archbishop of Spalato, who came to England in 
1616, declares in a letter to bishop Hall, that he 
saw nothing reformed there but the bare doctrine 
of the church. It is not strange, therefore, that 
a strong tendency toward Rome has been ever 
betraying itself in that quarter. Bishop Taylor 
considered his church to be separated from that 
of Rome merely "by " a paper wall." And 
though some excellent men have affirmed that 



40 LIFE OF JOHN COTTPN. 

the said paper wall was "just the thickness of 
the Bible," other men have found no difficulty 
in surmounting it, and getting back into the 
Italian fold. The church theory of the Angli- 
cans is the same as that of the Romanists. 
Both communions are based upon the same pre- 
tensions : they rest alike on that ecclesiastical 
figment, which is miscalled " apostolical succes- 
sion." If this be a good reason for being a pre- 
latist, it is a far stronger reason for being a papist. 
The pope urges the same arguments against the 
prelatists, that these latter use against us : and 
the same reasons justify us for disowning the 
supremacy of the prelates, which justify them 
for disowning the supremacy of the pope. It is 
natural that the high churchmen of England and 
elsewhere should sigh for such a reconciliation 
as might procure an endorsement of their claims 
by the pretended successors to St. Peter's chair. 
It is easy to understand the zeal of the Oxford 
divines, whose labors threaten to give occasion 
for renewing the complaint of archbishop Laud, 
" a man whom it is an act of self-denial to 
name without some epithet of reproach." In 
his dying speech, he said; — "The Church of 
England is become like an oak, cleft to shivers 
with wedges made out of its own body." 

John Cotton, and other Puritans, regarded the 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 41 



Church of England as wofully dissenting from 
the true Church of Christ, by her making the 
monarch of the realm her head and ruler. The 
king of Britain, say they, is a " protestant in 
taking, not in giving." Honest Fuller says ; — 
" The pope being dead in England, the king 
was found his heir at common law, as to most 
of the power and profit the other had usurped." 
This impious intrusion of an earthly prince, who 
might oftentimes be a monster of profligacy, or 
perhaps a mere child, a girl, into the throne of 
Zion's King, was more than the Puritans, ever 
jealous for the rights and honors of their Lord, 
could brook. They felt that "the church by 
law established" had dissented from the true 
basis of the church of God, because her articles 
of faith and frame of government rested on acts 
of parliament, which has power to new model 
her at will : whereas she should have stood upon 
the simple foundation of the Word of God. 
Osborne observes, in his Memoirs of Queen 
Elizabeth ; — " The doctrine professed most gen- 
erally in England, bore in foreign nations the 
name of parliament faith. "=^ This phrase often 
occurs in the letters of Erasmus. 

Now the Puritans demanded, in the name of 



* Parliamentaria fides, 

4* 



42 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

the Lord, that his royal power and privilege 
should be restored to him. New England had 
her "judicious Hooker," him of Hartford, the 
fellow-voyager with John Cotton to these shores. 
This good man thus explains the object sought by 
himself and his brethren ; — " As the prophetical 
and priestly office of Christ, was completely vin- 
dicated in the first times of reformation, so now 
the great cause and work of God's reforming 
people is, to clear the rights of Christ's kingly 
office, and in their practice to set up his king- 
dom.'"^ They received the name of Puritans 
from their resolute attempt to restore to their 
primitive purity the Christian faith and institu- 
tions, according to the principles laid down by 
the adorable Founder of Christianity. Their 
sentiments are thus expressed by the celebrated 
Dr. John Owen : — " They who hold communion 
with the Lord Jesus Christ, will admit nothing, 
practice nothing, in the worship of God, but 
what they have his warrant for. Unless com- 
ing in his name, they will not hear an angel 
from heaven. They know the apostles them- 
selves were to teach the saints only what he 
commanded them. And you know how many 
in this very nation, in the days not long since 



* Preface to Survey of Church Discipline. 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 43 

passed, yea, how many thousands left' their na- 
tive soil, and went into a vast and howling wil- 
derness, in the uttermost parts of the world, to 
keep th§ir souls undefiled and chaste unto their 
dear Lord Jesus, as to this matter of his worship 
and institutions."^ 

It is necessary that we should understand the 
principle involved in this great controversy. 
The Puritans did not contend for the abolishing 
of a few harmless or insignificant ceremonies 
more or less. They were willing, in the main, 
that such as chose to practice them voluntarily 
should do so. But they resisted the arbitrary 
imposition of those ceremonies upon those who 
conscientiously disliked them. And they re- 
sisted the imposition of such things as conditions 
of membership and ministry in the church, 
chiefly because they abrogated the only condi- 
tions which Christ had seen fit to establish, and 
presumed to bring in others by the force of hu- 
man enactments. They held, that the attempt 
to annul the terms of citizenship and office 
which Christ had decreed in his spiritual king- 
dom, and to substitute and enforce others of hu- 
man devising, was an act of usurpation, and 
essentially treasonable and rebellious against the 
King of Zion. 



* Communion with God. 



44 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

To comprehend the merits of this controversy, 
we are not to look at the importance of the 
points objected to in the forms of the national 
church, considered in themselves. In itself, it 
may be of very little consequence, whether, or 
not, ordination shall be exclusively performed 
by diocesans, — or whether or not the sign of the 
cross shall be used in baptism, — or whether the 
externals of public worship shall be performed 
in one way or another way, — or whether the 
Lord's Supper shall be received in this posture 
or in that. These, it may be, are small ques- 
tions to divide the church about. And yet it 
argues much more of smallness of soul to insist 
that they shall always be answered in one par- 
ticular way, as did the prelatical party, than to 
insist that every one should enjoy his own pref- 
erence in such matters, according to the free 
spirit of Christianity, as did the Puritans. They 
cared the less whether these things were essen- 
tial or not. But it became a question of awful 
magnitude, when they began to ask. By what 
right do men, setting aside the regulations of 
Christ, assume to say ; — " Conform to our can-- 
ons and decrees, albeit your Lord has never 
enjoined them : else you shall have no place in 
the house of God !" In this imperious demand, 
the Puritans saw not only an act of grievous 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 45 

tyranny over the consciences of the disciples, the 
free-born children of tlie house ; but they beheld 
an appalling invasion of the exclusive rights and 
dignities of the Lord and Master of the house- 
hold. It was not merely against the unrighteous 
exclusion of faithful men from the communion 
of the church and its covenanted mercies, against 
which our fathers protested ; but it was much 
more against proceedings so derogatory to the 
glory of the Mediator's throne. Even such tri- 
vial affairs as crucifixes and surplices acquire a 
magnitude not properly belonging to them, when 
they trench upon our allegiance to the Prince of 
life. Let it cost what it will, the supreme and 
undivided sovereignty and headship of Christ 
over all things pertaining to the church must be 
preserved inviolate and entire. 

Our later fathers, in the revolutionary times, 
acted like sound political puritans. Those 
staunch Boston boys did not make one great tea- 
pot of our harbor, and tinge its waters, as we 
say, with that greenish cerulean hue which it 
has never lost : — they did not thus hasten the 
glorious independence of these colonies, because 
they were too penurious to pay for the Chinese 
leaf three pence in the pound more than was 
proper. Oh no : — it was because they withstood 
the odious and tyrannical principle of taxation 



46 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

without representation. They stood for the 
right which, Burke says, " the Anglo-Saxon 
race have claimed in all ages, of being taxed 
only with their own consent." They were read- 
ier to die than to submit to this paltry import 
duty : for they saw that it was designed to sanc- 
tion a practice which must wrest from them the 
most cherished of their British liberties, and 
bring in a thousand forms of oppression upon 
them and their posterity. 

Possibly, some of the ceremonies of the church 
may have been once innocent, and even useful, 
like the venerable sign of the cross. But when, 
by long abuse, they had come to be inseparably 
coupled with superstition, there was good cause 
why the observance of them, at least the compul- 
sory observance, should cease. Among the 
commendable actions of the pious Hezekiah, we 
read that he "brake in pieces the brazen serpeni 
that Moses had made ; for unto those days, the 
children of Israel did burn incense to it ; and he 
called it, Nehushtan ; " — that is, a mere piece of 
brass. Now this was a most precious relic of 
antiquity. By means of it, God had wrought a 
most wonderful deliverance for his people. It 
was even a type of the Messiah himself, who 
should yet be uplifted by the gospel, even " as 
Moses lifted up that serpent in the wilderness," 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 47 

SO that perishing souls might look to him and 
live. And yet the Jewish king, like a godly and 
zealous Puritan, as in his time he was, dashed 
it to fragments, that it should no more be per- 
verted to idolatrous purposes. They who approve 
this deed, which God himself approved, canno^ 
but justify the image-breaking of our fathers." 

The church had become encrusted with many 
successive layers of corrupt innovation. For 
ages, these accretions had been forming one 
upon another. The wish of the Puritans was, 
to peel off these lamina ; and to remove them 
all, till they should come down to the original 
proper substance of the Church. They were for 
unwinding the interminable mummy-cloths, by 
which the Church had been nearly bandaged 
into a corpse ; and so restoring her to life and 
enjoyment, to beauty and action. They followed 
the plan of stripping off all those usages which 
could not plead the recorded inspiration of the 
Bible in their favor. They rejected every canon 
and custom, of whose origin they could tell the 
date, and of whose originators they could give the 
names. And when all these foreign, unconge- 
nial and injurious inventions, which had been 
superimposed upon the primitive discipline, had 
been removed, they found as the result, our no- 
ble Congregational Church Polity. Take any 



48 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

existing Church, and deprive it of all the pecu- 
liarities for which it is indebted to man, until 
nothing is left but what is of divine institution, 
and the pure Scriptural residuum, thus purged 
of human adulterations, will be simple Congre- 
gationalism. Tliis system of Church polity, 
perfectly accords with the genius of Christianity, 
and is instinct with the free spirit of our religion. 
For reducing their views on the subject of 
Church government to practice, and for acting in 
accordance with their convictions, it is well known 
that our fathers were very roughly handled by 
those who claimed to be their ecclesiastical su- 
periors. The persecuted men submitted to their 
sufferings for the Lord's sake. It was no part 
of their policy, to conduct themselves so outra- 
geously, as, in a manner, to compel magistrates 
to restrain, or mobs to assail them. The\' did 
not first by their misbehavior, necessitate a tu- 
multuous opposition ; and then raise a piteous 
cry of " Persecution ! persecution ! " The plan 
of trading in this sort of capital, and making 
their gains out of the sympathy of a silly multi- 
tude led away by such tricks of " moral reform," 
was an invention of after times. When it could 
be avoided, our fathers shunned the stroke of 
oppression, and shielded themselves in every 
justifiable way. But wlicn it was inevitable. 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 49 

they met it calmly and courageously, they bore 
it meekly and piously, as the chastening of the 
Lord. In Luther's " Table Discourses," we find 
that bold reformer saying ; — " When governors 
and rulers are enemies to God's word, then our 
duty is to depart, to sell or forsake all we have, 
to fly from one place to another, as Christ com- 
mandeth. We must make and prepare no 
uproars and tumults, by reason of the gospel ; 
but we must suffer all things." 

Thus did the Puritans. When a parish min- 
ister in England, found any of the practices of 
the National Church to be contrary to the sim- 
plicity and obedience of Christ, he discontinued 
the use of them. He abandoned one such point 
after another, as fast as his conscience was 
enlightened in respect to them. Meanwhile, he 
kept quietly along in the discharge of all his 
ministerial functions. If the ecclesiastical pow- 
ers took no notice of his non-conformity as to 
their unrighteous regulations, as was often the 
case for considerable periods together, the man 
of God labored peacefully and zealously for the 
salvation of the flock committed to his care, by 
the providence of the great Head of the Church. 
When at last the vigilant eye of official despo- 
tism, took notice of his Puritanism, he sought to 
screen himself from the coming storm, by calling 

VOL. I. 5 



60 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

to his aid such protectors as he could find. 
When such means failed, and warrants were 
issued for his arrest and imprisonment, he then 
" fled from one city to another ; " he either con- 
cealed himself among friends, till the tempest 
should blow over, or strove to escape through 
ports strictly guarded to prevent his departure, 
and live as an exile in some foreign land. But 
if he fell into the hands of those who would lord 
it over a conscience which refused obedience in 
spiritual matters to any but Christ, he then sub- 
mitted with dignified resignation, to the pains 
and penalties of the law. He refused to renounce 
his Master ; but he refused not to suffer for him. 
Of such, some, subjected to fines and confisca- 
tions, " took joyfully the spoiling of their goods ;" 
" and others had trial of cruel mockings and 
scourgings, yea, moreover of bonds and impris- 
onment ; " and others still " refused not to die, 
for the name of the Lord Jesus." 

When extruded from their parish churches, 
they met, in retired places, such part of their 
flocks as sought their instructions, with a love 
for the truth which surmounted the sense of peril ; 
for the arm of power sought to suppress these 
" conventicles," as they were opprobriously 
termed. And yet, originally, this was a most 
honorary name ; for the primitive churches were 



LIFE OP JOHN COTTON. 61 

called " conventicles," by the pagan emperors, 
in those days when the Roman sword dripped 
with an unceasing stream of martyr's blood. "^ 

When driven forth as banished men, our 
fathers did not feel that they were forsaking the 
sacred cause of the gospel. Their exile to these 
western shores was a confession that the faith 
was dearer to them, than all the cherished 
objects of attachment they left behind. They 
thus evinced how much they " preferred Jerusa- 
lem above their chief joy." They regarded 
their exodus from the land of bondage, as " not 
a flight /ro??i duty, but unto duty." Here they 
were enabled to bear a more decided testimony 
against the intermixture of human inventions, 
with divine ordinances, than they could have 
done elsewhere. Here only, could they main- 
tain in their purity, the worship and polity of 
the gospel. We see the wisdom of God in 
transplanting them to these vacant deserts, whose 
remoteness made them more fit for free and 
untrammeled inquiry for the ordinances of the 
Bible. Here no antiquated prejudices rudely 
thwarted the investigating mind. No frowning 
cathedral, with gloomy pomp, predisposed the 
mind of the worshiper to accord with usages. 



* Arnobius, Lib. 4. Ed. Lugd., p. ir)2. Lactanlius, Inst. Lib. 5. 
c. 1 1. De Morte Persec. cc. 15, 34, 36, 48. 



52 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

which, for centuries, had obscured the evangeli- 
cal sincerity. Amid the aisles of the forest, and 
beneath the dome of heaven, surrounded by na- 
ture in its pristine state, as yet, untouched by art ; 
environed by the works of the Creator, which 
the hands of man had not assayed to remodel, 
our fathers reverently hearkened to the oracles 
of God. In this temple not made with hands, 
they first celebrated that worship, which is not 
of mere human appointment. It was thus, in 
the wilderness, that God gave to Moses the pat- 
tern of the tabernacle. It was while he was an 
exile in an uncultured part of Chaldea, that 
Ezekiel saw the plan of the temple. It was 
during his banishment to the desert isle of Pat- 
mos, that the Apostle beheld that glorious vision 
of the city of God. And it was amid these pri- 
meval solitudes, that God more distinctly mani- 
fested to our pilgrim sires, the true frame and 
model of the primitive Church. Here they 
afforded a specimen of the new heavens and the 
new earth, " which, according to his promise, 
we look for." 

For having obeyed their consciences, which 
bid them obey the Bible, — for having followed the 
leading of the Scripture, which is at once the 
two-edged sword and royal sceptre of the Son of 
God in his spiritual kingdom, — for refusing to 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 53 

keep the commandments and traditions of men, — 
the Puritans have been covered w^ith reproaches. 
Especially have they been charged with the 
odious accusation of separation from the true 
Church of God ; breaking out of her enclosure, 
and casting themselves, in all the presumption of 
unbelief, on the uncovenanted mercies of God. 
No pains have been spared to heap scorn upon 
their name, and to brand them with the odious 
crime of schism. 

But this charge of schism they hurled back, 
like Abdiel replying to the prince of darkness, 
*' with retorted scorn." One of them, speaking 
of the Laudians, and their triple plot of Armini- 
anism, Romanism, and civil Despotism, for the 
promotion of all which they so furiously urged 
conformity, makes the following strong remarks : 
" We dare not be guilty of the schism which we 
charge upon that party in the Church of England : 
and if any faction of men will require the assent 
and consent of other men to a vast number of 
disputable and uninstituted things, and utterly 
renounce all christian communion with all that 
shall not give that assent and consent, we look 
upon those to be separatists." 

The Puritans did not consider themselves as 
excluded from communion by the Church of 
England, but by a schismatical faction which 
5* 



54 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

had gotten the upper hand in that communion. 
They ever insisted that they were true and 
faithful sons of that ancient Church : " nor did 
they think it was their mother who turned them 
out of doors," but some of their mother's children 
who were angry with them, and who, abusing 
ihe name of their mother, so harshly treated 
them. They held, that the true Protestant Re- 
forming Church of England, comprehended all 
faithful, baptized Christians, however variant, 
as to modes of belief and practice in lesser points 
of religion, and wherever dispersed, throughout 
the then British dominions. This holy and 
catholic fellowship they steadfastly maintained. 
They felt that it was unjust and libelous, that 
they should be stigmatized as Schismatics, 
merely because they were determined, as Christ- 
ians ought to be, to allow of no unauthorized 
intrusion upon the kingly office of their Lord. 
They were sensible, that they were grossly 
wronged in being treated as heretics, only for 
conforming to the will of Christ, instead of the 
will of man ; and for seeking to restore the sacred 
streams of ecclesiastical usage to the primitive 
channels, from whence they had been drawn 
aside into so many branching canals by the 
innovators of a dozen centuries. The Puritans 
agreed with Bishop Stillingfieet in the preface to 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 55 

his Irenicum, that Christ, "who came to take away 
the insupportable yoke of the Jewish ceremonies, 
certainly did never intend to gall the necks of 
disciples with another, instead of it ; and it 
w^ould be strange, if the church would require 
more than Christ himself did ; and make more 
terms of communion, than our Saviour did of 
discipleship." " The grand commission the apos- 
tles were sent out with, was only to teach 
v;hat Christ had commanded them ; not the least 
intimation of any power given them to impose or 
require any thing, beyond what he himself had 
spoken to them, or they were directed to by the 
immediate guidance of the Spirit of God." To 
the statutes of Christ, promulgated by the in- 
spired Apostles, the Puritans ever gladly sub- 
mitted. Though they refused to subscribe to 
parliament canons, they were always ready to 
subscribe to the New Testament. When Arch- 
bishop Laud undertook to cut ofT such members 
from the Church, our fathers regarded him as a 
man who should bestride one bough of a tree, 
and fall to sawing it off between himself and the 
main-trunk, under pretence of lopping off the 
whole tree ! They looked upon Laud as the 
grand Schismatic, who was destined to catch a 
severe fall as the result of his sectarizing opera- 
tions. The last stroke of his axe, he felt in his 



66 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

own person, at what time the oppressed rose up 
in desperation, " and wronged the wronger till 
he rendered right." 

There are many good reasons which will jus- 
tify a man for transferring his covenant relation 
from one true church, to another such. No 
exception can be taken at the opinion of Dr. 
Ames ; — " If any, wronged with unjust vexation, 
or providing for his own edification, or in testi- 
mony against sin, depart from a church where 
some evils are tolerated, and join himself to 
another more pure, yet without condemning the 
church he leaveth, he is not therefore to be held 
as a schismatic, or as guilty of any other sin. '"^ 
To leave even a pure church, for one compara- 
tively more pure, provided it be done with due 
love and respect toward the body which is left, 
is no rupture of spiritual unity, or breach of 
Zion's peace. " Unity in diversity, and diver- 
sity in unity, — is a law of nature, and also of 
the Church." Though every tent-pin which 
really belongs to the tabernacle, is hallowed and 
precious, we should not break the cords, or rend 
the curtains to pieces, for the sake of driving 
every pin with the utmost exactness. 

The guilt of schism, where it is actually in- 



* Book of Conscience, Book iv: ch. xiv. no 16. 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 57 

curred, is terrible indeed. It is hateful in the 
sight of the Lord. More rude than the soldiers 
at the cross, it rends asunder his seamless ves- 
ture. Nay in its wilder and more savage exces- 
ses, it would fix its demon clutches on his sacred 
and mystical body, to rend it, if that were possi- 
ble, limb from limb. 

Now if there were any schism involved in the 
wide division of sentiments between the Puri- 
tans, and the domineering heads who were then 
lording it over God's heritage, we contend that 
the fault lay wholly with the latter. They re- 
fused to part with the popish relics which still 
hung thick about the " Church by law estab- 
lished," and which the first reformers had only 
left for a season, till the state of public opinion 
among the body of the people should be suffi- 
ciently enlightened to permit the entire abolition 
of them. Though the time had come when 
these vestiges of popery might have been peace- 
fully thrown off, the Laudians not only clung 
tenaciously to them, but used every exertion to 
restore as much as possible of the accursed Baby- 
lonish vesture which had been cast aside. The 
Puritans, who " hated even the garments spotted 
by the flesh" of the idolatrous Church of Rome, 
contracted no schismatic taint by their endeavors 
to escape all contact with so much as one pol- 



58 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

luted shred worn by that ancient harlot who had 
reveled so long on the spoils of Christ's king- 
dom, and made herself drunk with the blood of 
her saints. Well were they vindicated in a 
speech of the eloquent Chatham, in the house of 
Lords, in 1773. Dr. Drummond, archbishop of 
York, had taxed the non-conforming clergy as 
men of " close ambition." "They are so, my 
lords," retorted the noble earl, " and their ambi- 
tion is to keep close to the college of fishermen, 
not of cardinals ; and to the doctrine of inspired 
apostles^ not to the decrees of interested and 
aspiring bishops. They contend for a spiritual 
creed and a spiritual worship ; we have a Calvin- 
istic creed, a popish liturgy, and an Arminian 
clergy." Sure it was no sin for the Puritans to 
do their best to bring the church out of such an 
unnatural and unreasonable predicament, even 
if it could only be effected by a remedy adequate 
to the disease, — another Protestant reformation. 
But we take stronger ground than this, in 
vindicating our conscientious fathers from the 
sin of schism. They did not willfully and will- 
ingly withdraw from the communion of the par- 
ish churches of England. As Chillingworth 
says, they were " nonfi/gitivi, sedfugati ;" they 
were not voluntary fugitives, but were driven to 
compulsory flight. They were not spontaneous 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 69 

seceders ; they were expelled by force and pow- 
er. They would have remained in the folds 
wherein they were born, had they been suffered 
to do so, except on the impossible condition of 
defiling their consciences and violating the Word 
of God. They may have trembled somewhat at 
the menaces of the great; but they trembled much 
more at the Word of the Lord. They were 
willing that others should conform, who could 
do it without hurting their own consciences. 
Even Luther coulH say ; — " I could be well 
content to hold the pope in befitting respect and 
honor, yet so far that he permitted me to have 
my conscience at liberty, and forced me not to 
oflfend my God, and to act any thing against 

him." 

But the non-conformists of England were not 
allowed to abide in the national church, nor even 
in the realm, except on the hard alternative of 
conforming to what they felt to be sin, or else 
mhabiting the prisons. They went not forth of 
their own accord ; they were thrust out at the 
sword's point. It was thus that they became 
" strangers unto their brethren, and aliens unto 
their mother's children." Who, then, were the 
schismatics ? — the men, who, willing to tolerate 
others, refused to sin against the sole supremacy 
of Christ in his Church ? — or they who imposed 



60 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

unscriptural terms of communion, and exacted 
strict conformity as the price of toleration ? 
Says Hales of Eaton ; — " Where cause of schism 
is necessary, there, not he that separates, but he 
that occasions the separation, is schismatic."^ 
We cannot but think that the sin of schism, if 
any there be, cleaves to the tyrannous and im- 
perious exactors of things which Christ has 
never commanded ; and not to the pious recu- 
sants. To these last may well be applied the 
parting benediction of Moses ; — " Let the bless- 
ing come upon the head of Joseph, and upon the 
top of the head of him that was separated from 
his brethren." 

The year 1662 is forever memorable in the 
annals of the sufiering non-conformists. Then 
was passed and enforced the infamous act of 
uniformity, which deserves to be classed" with 
the rescripts which caused the Bartholomew 
massacres, and with the revocation of the edict 
of Nantes. That act of uniformity was the di- 
viding stroke of separation, and it was not dealt 
by the hands of the Puritans, but by those of 
their relentless oppressors. Jonathan Mitchell 
was then pastor of Cambridge in New England: 
a man of whom Baxter said ; — " If there could 
be convened an oecumenical council of the whole 



♦ Tract concefning schism, in Sparks' Collection, v. 25. 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 61 

Christian world, that man would be worthy to 
be the moderator of it."^ On the last day of that 
eventful year, the matchless Mitchell, as his 
friends loved to call him, wrote as follows ; — 
" Our cause is not separation from any thing 
good in other churches, whether truth of church- 
state, or any doctrine rightly professed, or ordi- 
nance rightly administered in them. But it is 
reformation only of what is amiss or defective in 
the churches we came from.t This defines the 
true position of our fathers : a position which 
none will assail, but those who fancy that 
"healing the sores must maim the body." 

When Moses, descending from the mount, 
found the catholic congregation of Israel turned 
to idolatry, he "took the tabernacle, and pitched 
it without the camp, afar off from the camp, and 
called it the Tabernacle of the Congregation.'* 
In this, be sure, he was not guilty of schism ; and 
much less were our fathers, when going forth 
on compulsion, unwilling exiles, they took the 
tabernacle, made in all things* according to the 
pattern showed them in the mount, and set it 
up, far from the camp of idolatry, in this west- 
ern wilderness. As the followers of Jesus, who, 



* Remarkablea of Dr. I. Mather, 
t Elijah's Mantle, p. 2. 

VOL. I. 6 



62 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

" that he might sanctify the people with his own 
blood, suffered without the gate," their language 
was ; — " Let us go forth unto him without the 
camp, bearing his reproach ; for here have we 
no continuing city, but we seek one to come." 
Jesus was in his time a great reformer and Pu- 
ritan, coming with his winnowing fan in his 
hand, that he might thoroughly purge his floor : 
and such schismatics as he and his apostles were 
when cast out of the synagogues of Judea, even 
such were our fathers when forcibly extruded 
from the parish churches of England. 

That they suffered this extrusion solely against 
their will, and therefore were not accountable 
for it, as being a misery they could not avoid, is 
manifest from many proofs. It appears in that 
celebrated and pathetic address sent by the first 
Massachusetts emigrants while yet on board the 
Arbella, " to the rest of their brethren in and of 
the Church of England." "We are not of 
those," say that noble band, "who dream of 
perfection in this world ; yet we desire that you 
would be pleased to take notice of the principals 
and body of our company, as those who esteem 
it our honor to call the Church of England, from 
whence we rise, our dear mother, and cannot 
part from our native country where she specially 
resideth, without much sadness of heart, and 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 63 



many tears in our eyes ; ever acknowledging 
that such hope and part as we have obtained in 
the common salvation, we have received in her 
bosom, and sucked it from her breasts. We 
leave it not, therefore, as loathing- that milk 
wherewith we were nourished there ; but bless- 
ing God for the parentage and education, as 
members of the same body, shall always rejoice 
in her good, and unfeignedly grieve for any sor- 
row that shall ever betide her; and while we 
have breath, sincerely desire and endeavor the 
continuance and abundance of her welfare, with 
the enlargement of her bounds in the kingdom 
of Christ Jesus ; wishing our heads and hearts 
were fountains of tears for your everlasting wel- 
fare, when we shall be in our poor cottages in 
the wilderness, overshadowed with the spirit of 
supplication."^ So too, the year before, the 
pious Higginson, the faithful pastor of Salem, in 
taking his last look of his native land from the 
stern of his ship, exclaimed ; — " We will not say 
as the Separatists were wont to say at their 
leaving of England, Farewell, Babylon ! Fare- 
well, Rome ! But we will say. Farewell, dear 
England ! Farewell, the Church of God in Eng- 
land, and all the Christian friends there ! We 



* Hubbard, Chapter XXIII. 



64 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

do not go to New England as separatists from 
the Church of England; though we cannot but 
separate from the corruptions in it : but we go 
to practice the positive part of church reforma- 
tion, and propagate the gospel in America.'"^ 

Jonathan Mitchell, at whose untimely death 
it was said, that " all New England shook when 
that pillar fell to the ground," thus expressed the 
matter in his sermon, called " Nehemiah upon 
the Wall." Speaking against '* separation, ana- 
baptism and anarchial confusion," he says; — 
" If any would secretly twist in, and espouse 
such things as those, and make them part of our 
interest, we must needs renounce it as none of 
our cause, no part of the end and design of the 
Lord's faithful servants, when they followed him 
" into this land that was not sown." Separation 
and anabaptism, are wonted intruders, and seem- 
ing friends, but secret fatal enemies, to reforma- 
tion. Do not, on pretence of avoiding corruption, 
run into sinful separation from any true churches 
of God, and what is good therein. And yet it 
is our errand into the wilderness to study and 
practice true Scripture reformation ; and it will 
be our crown in the sight of God and man, if we 
find it and hold it, without adulterating devia- 
tions." 



* Magnalia, Book III., ch. I., Sec. 12. 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 65 

Additional testimonies of the same character 
will be given in another place. Such language 
must fully exculpate such as used it from the 
charge of making schismatical divisions, if it be 
admitted that they uttered these expressions with 
sincerity. We are too well aware, that some mean 
and malignant writers, who were unable to con- 
ceive it possible that men could entertain such 
magnanimous sentiments as these, have ques- 
tioned the sincerity of our fathers. The charac- 
ter of our fathers, so bold to avow the truth, and 
so resolute to suffer in its behalf, sufficiently 
refutes the calumny. The most decided Con- 
gregationalists among their descendants, whose 
sincerity has never been questioned, read the 
above cited declarations of Winthrop and his 
associates with high approbation, and heartily 
accord with the sentiments therein expressed. 
The New England churches consider them- 
selves to be purified branches of that original 
church-stock which flourished in England, before 
Romish art and violence had twisted it out of its 
proper shape and form. 

Surely it is the extremity of injustice to accuse 
the Puritans as being of a schismatical temper. 
They felt themselves, as we, their descendants, 
and inheritors of their principles, now feel our- 
selves to be, in full fellowship with all that is 



66 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

good and all that is true in the communion of 
the Church of England and in every other 
Christian denomination. They and we are in- 
separably joined to the whole church catholic 
of faithful men, " endeavoring to keep the unity 
of the Spirit in the bond of peace." 

The multiplicity of sects is much deplored. 
A sect, according to the derivation of the word, 
is something which is " cut off." But in New 
England, the "standing order," is no sect, no 
cut-off. We are not dissected from others, even 
though they be severed from us. We be the 
main-stock, which remains rooted and grounded, 
even when parted branches are torn away. We 
are the mother-church, and so no flying off of 
her children, can make us as any one of them. 
Whatever other respected denominations and 
beloved sister-churches may be, we are here, no 
sect, — no cut-off; but the original vine of God's 
planting in this land. We grow upon the an 
cient trunk, "partaking of its root and fatness." 
We be no innovators, no revolutionists, no disor- 
ganizers. Our church polity, and scheme of 
doctrine, is in rightful possession of all the 
ground it holds. 

Thus, if we insist upon the use of the Bible 
in our common Schools, we set up no novel 
claim. This country was settled by Bible 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 67 

Christians, who spent life and treasure for the 
purpose of making the Bible the basis of our 
system of education, as well as of all the rest of 
our social institutions. We are only on defensive 
and conservative ground, and are only moving 
on in the straightforward track of duty. 

We have showed the necessity of Puritanism 
in the days of our fathers, — the need of thorough 
ecclesiastical reform in regard to the infringe- 
ments and usurpal encroachments upon Christ's 
kingly office in the government of the Church 
he had purchased with his own blood. In this 
point of view, they were the light of the world, 
and shone serene, far above the troubled clouds, 
which by snatches obscured their brightness 
from the sight of men. • 

Yes : the Puritan piety was needed in that 
day. And no less is it needed now. The 
words of one of those good men are as seasona^ 
ble as ever ; — " Babylon paints her face anew 
at this day ; antichrist hath varnished his inter- 
est, so that there are many who are allured and 
taken with the beauty of that harlot." We have 
also seen the truth of his further remark, that 
" a loose protestant is fit to become a strict 
papist.'"^ Human corruption is seeking as 



* W. Sioughton, Election Sermon, 1668. p. 27. 



68 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

busily as ever, to obscure the beaming simplicity 
of the gospel ; spoiling its divine beauty " through 
philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of 
men, after the rudiments of the world, and not 
after Christ." Alas for our Zion, once "the 
perfection of beauty, the joy of the whole earth," 
alas for her, if that race of noble spirits shall be- 
come extinct in such a day of rebuke and 
blasphemy as this. " The fathers, — where are 
they ? " 

" O, they are fled the light ! Those mighty spirits 
Lie raked up with their ashes in their urns; 
And not a spark of their eternal fire, 
Glows in a present bosom." 

But no ; — the sacred flame is not quenched in 
this land, which the prayers of our pilgrim sires 
have hallowed, and made it holy ground. 

" E'en in their ashes, live their wonted fires." 

The latent heat pervades the soil, breathes geni- 
ally in the air, and diffuses the life-warmth 
through all our social state. 

Our thoughts revert to those days of sorest 
trial, when our fathers and mothers literally 
" left all," to follow Christ into " a land not 
sown." " Weep not for the dead, neither bemoan 
him ; but weep sore for him that goeth away ; 
for he shall return no more, nor see his native 
country." What a scene the embarkation of 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 69 

those sorrowing- companies of pilgrims must 
have been. There were godly and reverend 
ministers, disguised in shipman's garb, appre- 
hensively watching, lest the pursuivant should 
come to arrest their flight ; dreading to go, but 
dreading more to be hindered from going. 
There were men with anxious countenances, 
hurrying the preparations for their tedious voy- 
age ; — women, with care-worn features, and 
looks of resignation, waiting the last signal in 
silent agony : — children, poor things, who must 
be borne far away, not knowing whither or why. 
There were friends to be left behind, under the 
sad presentiment of meeting no more on earth. 
The tenderest ties were sundering, even such as 
had never been severed before. Were there 
ever sorrows or tears like those ? What impas- 
sioned repetitions of terms of endearment, such 
as excited afTection loves to utter, were mutually 
breathed, till the voice became choked with emo- 
tion, and they wept upon each other's necks till 
they recovered speech again. Then comes the 
breaking away from fond embraces, whose tender 
pressure shall never again be felt ; — the brief 
farewells, the ejaculated blessings, the affection- 
ate charges, and messages of love to absent 
friends. And now the last fast is cast off. The 
vessel moves upon her billowy course. The 



70 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

forms so tearfully watched, recede into fainter 
view. But waving signals tell of the " longing, 
lingering glances," which cannot bear the deep 
desponding anguish of the last — last look. 

love of Jesus ! how does it triumph in such 
an hour of bitterest woe ! the power of relig- 
ion, which can constrain to a living martyrdom, 
keen as the pangs of death, and torturing as the 
cross ! Aye, how does it cheer the soul, not by 
stupifying its sensibilities, but by lifting them 
all torn and bleeding, to the view of a pitying 
Saviour, and elevated in sublime devotion, re- 
ceiving from his compassion, a rush of sympa- 
thy, an overflowing consolation, a joy so full 
of heaven, that earth and all its sorrows are 
sweetly forgotten. Blessed wounds which bring 
such healing ! Happy griefs w^hich teach such 
comfort ! These scars of the heart are the love- 
tokens of Christ, and the treasured pledges of a 
home whose friendships are eternal, and where 
parting is unknown. 

Let us rally around the banner of our sires. 
What recreant and caitive heart, what degener- 
ate spirit would desert it now ? The pilgrims 
bore it, like valiant standard-bearers, in the front 
of the Lord's battle. There it has ever been 
wont to fly, where the conflict raged strongest 
against the powers of darkness. And still un- 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 71 

torn and untarnished, it has often waved over 
the field of its glorious triumphs. Though the 
flag, in these stiller times, may hang drooping 
from the lofty staff, yet, when iniquity cometh 
in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord, as a rush- 
ing, mighty wind, shall lift up the ancient stand- 
ard. Then, in sure token of victory, it will 
spread out its ample folds, with the broad blazon 
of the bannered cross. 



72 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 



CHAPTER IV. 

Mr. Cotton countenanced by the people in his non-conformity. 
Suspension from ministry. Suspension unexpectedly tnken 
off. Successful labors. Theological instructions. Indefatigable 
preaching. Correspondence. Wonderful and general reforma- 
tion. Archbishop Williams. Earls of Dorchester and Lyndsay. 
Disabled by ague. Second marriage. Cited to High Com- 
mission Court. Fate of the informer. Earl of Dorset intercedes W 
for 3Ir. Cotton in vain. Concealment. Letter to I\Irs. Cotton. 
Sets out to go to Holland. Diverted to Ixmdon. Interesting con- 
ference with Mr. Davenport and others. Resolves to go to New 
England. Embarks wiili dlLlJculiy in the Grithn. 

When Mr. Cotton ceased from his conformity 
with the exceptionable features in the national 
worship, so great was his popularity with his 
people, that, far from opposing him on that ac- 
count, the greatest part of them sustained him 
in his course. Thomas Leverett, however, one 
of his parishioners,, with some others, prosecuted 
complaints against their minister in the Episco- 
pal courts ; till, after some time, he was silenced 
by order of the bishop. 

During his suspension, Mr. Cotton gave con- 
stant attendance to the public preaching of his 
substitute ; but never to the readinof of the Book 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 73 

of Common Prayer. He was now subjected to 
severe temptations to swerve from the path of 
duty. He was not only promised, that he should 
be restored to the freedom of his ministry, but 
promoted to very great preferment in the church, 
on condition of conformity to the scrupled rites, 
only in a single instance. But he kept the in- 
tegrity of his conscience undefiled, " unawed by 
influence, and unbribed by gain." Meanwhile 
a portentous cloud of troubles was gathering 
over his head ; but was strangely dispersed 
again. Mr. Leverett himself, the author of 
these difficulties, became deeply penitent for 
his agency in causing them. He went to one 
of the proctors of the archi-episcopal court, to 
whom he presented a pair of gloves, and then 
made his appeal from the court below. Mr. 
Leverett made oath before this officer, who 
favored him in the terms of the deposition, that 
" Mr. Cotton was a man conformable to the 
mind of the Lord.'' On the strength of this 
very ambiguous deposition, the silenced minis- 
ter, he scarce knew how, found himself healed 
of his ecclesiastical bronchitis, and restored to 
the use of his voice in the pulpit. The same 
Mr. Leverett ever after was his steadfast friend ; 
and following his fortunes to this side of the 
Atlantic, was for many years a useful elder in 

VOL. I. 7 



74 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 



the first church in Boston, Mass. By the same 
means, Mr. Bennet, another of his parishioners, 
occasionally screened his minister from harass- 
ing prosecutions. 

After this affair, Mr. Cotton went on with his 
sacked duties, uninterrupted for many years. 
Making no efforts to build up a party or to gain 
adherents, he laboriously devoted himself to 
teaching the people the Christian religion. 
During the twenty years that he retained his 
charge, he thrice went over the whole body of 
systematic divinity, with especial pains to in- 
doctrinate the younger part of his flock. In his 
preaching he largely expounded several of the 
books of Scripture, in which gift he greatly ex- 
celled. 

As one instance of his power to awaken the 
conscience, it is said that he once handled the 
sixth commandment with such effect, that a 
woman who had been married sixteen years to 
her second husband, openly confessed to the 
crime of poisoning her former husband. This 
confession she made, though it exposed her to 
be burned to death at the stake ; the barbarous 
punishment then awarded to such an offence, 
wliitli was regarded as " petty treason." 

So great was Mr. Cotton's celebrity as an in- 
structor, that his house was full of young students. 



LTFK OF JOHN COTTON. 75 

some of whom resorted to him from Holland, 
and some from Germany. In those days, the 
sons of the Puritans did not repair to the land 
where too many of the learned, enveloped in 
the fumes of their unquenchable pipes, " drink 
beer and think beer," till their brains reek with 
the noisome smoke of transcendental speculation. 
The most of Mr. Cotton's pupils were from that 
University where he had been trained ; for Dr. 
Preston ever counseled his students who had 
nearly completed the , prescribed course of stud- 
ies, to perfect their preparation for public ser- 
vices by a brief residence with the puritan 
minister of Boston. It came to be a common 
saying-, that " Mr. Cotton is Dr. Preston's 
seasoning vessel." 

His ministerial labors were abundant. In 
addition to the ordinary duties of the Sabbath, 
he preached statedly four times in the week, 
viz., early each Wednesday and Thursday morn- 
ing ; and again in the afternoons of Thursday 
and Saturday. Moreover he frequently held 
other occasional services, in which he often 
spent six hours in prayer and preaching. When 
we think of such immense labors sustained 
through a long course of years, we are at a loss 
which to admire most ; the indefatigable indus- 
try of the teacher, or the insatiable eagerness of 



76 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

the people for his instructions. In these degen- 
erate days, such congregations are as rare as 
such ministers. For several of the latter years 
of his residence in that well cultured field, he 
was assisted by a colleague. That was not the 
era of superabounding periodicals and cheap 
literature. The mass of the people then de- 
pended on hearing, for mental aliment and ex- 
citement, as much as now on reading. 

Mr. Cotton's usefulness was further extended 
by a large correspondence with those who 
sought his aid for resolving obscure points of 
doctrine, difficult texts of Scripture, or perplex- 
ing cases of conscience. Besides this he was 
considerably occupied every year in providing 
for the spiritual wants of other congregations ; 
and especially in his native place, where he 
was held in the highest estimation. 

The multiplied toils of this faithful servant 
were not thrown away. The Spirit of the 
Lord was with him. There was 'a surprising 
reformation of manners in the community. 
Profaneness was well nigh abolished. Hurtful 
and superstitious practices were done away. 
The great body of the people became decidedly 
religious. As the phrase was, most of the 
Satanicals had become Puritanicals. The 
mayor, with the greater part of the magis- 



LIFE OP JOHN COTTON. 77 

trates, had embraced the truth. Many scores of 
devout persons, without forming themselves into 
a separate church, more fully perfected their 
existing church-state by solemnly covenanting 
with God and with each other, to follow the 
Lord in the purity of his worship. The minis- 
ter whose fidelity was thus rewarded, was the 
admiration of his hearers ; " exceedingly be- 
loved of the best, and admired and reverenced 
of the worst." He was held in high respect by 
some of the chief dignitaries both in Church and 
State. It was noticed that the temporal pros- 
perity of the town was much promoted by the 
increased intelligence and good order which 
pervaded the place in consequence of his activ- 
ity. On his account it was much resorted to by 
strangers, and " many gentlemen of good qual- 
ity " made it their abode. 

At this time, Mr. Cotton had a very able col- 
league. Dr. Anthony Tuckney, afterwards Mas- 
ter of St. John's College, Cambridge. While 
he filled this latter office, he published a 
" Briefe Exposition of Ecclesiastes," by Mr. 
Cotton, a year or two subsequent to the latter's 
decease. To this volume, printed at London in 
1654, Dr. Tuckney prefixed a dedication, ad- 
dressed to the mayor, with the aldermen and 

other Christian friends, of Boston, in Lincoln- 

7# 



78 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

shire. The dedication presents a very happy 
picture of his joint ministry with Mr. Cotton in 
that favored place. " The large interest," says 
Dr. Tuckney, " which I have long enjoyed in 
your favor, and which you must ever have in 
my heart, hath emboldened me to prefix your 
names to this piece ; and with the more confi- 
dence of its acceptance, because in it an address 
is made to you at once by two who sometimes 
were together your ministers in the gospel of 
Christ : by the ever to be honored Mr. Cotton, 
in the book, and by my unworthy self in the 
review and dedication of it. Both of us are 
now removed from you : the one, first to a 
remote part of the world, there to plant church- 
es, — and thence, after that happy work done, to 
heaven : the other to some more publique ser- 
vice nearer hand. I often call to mind those 
most comfortable days, in which I enjoyed the 
happiness of joint ministry with so able and 
faithful a guide : and both of us so much satis- 
faction and encouragement from a people so 
united in the love both of the truth, and of one 
another. I cannot read what Paul writeth of 
his Thessalonians, (in the first chapters of both 
his epistles to them,) but I think I read over 
what we then found in Boston. They were 
then very happy days with you, when your 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 79 

faith (lid grow exceedingly, and your love to 
Christ's ordinances, ministers, servants, and to 
one another abounded. AUhough your town 
be situated in a low country, yet God then 
raised your esteem very high : and your emi- 
nency in piety overtopped the height of your 
steeple. Your name was as an ointment poured 
out, and your renown went forth for that beauty 
and comeliness, which God had put upon you." 
How can we refrain from lamenting, that a 
•Christian flock, so happily and profitably united 
under the guidance of its beloved pastors, could 
not escape the fury of religious tyranny ? Such 
interference is impotent as to any good, but all - 
powerRil for evil. There is evidence, that the 
leaven of Mr. Cotton's piety long lingered in 
that once favored place. Perhaps we have an 
evidence that its influence is still, in some 
measure, transmitted to the present inhabitants. 
In this year, 1846, the mayor and aldermen of 
that ancient corporation addressed a letter to 
the civic authorities of Boston in New England. 
This well written communication was sent with 
the noble design of drawing closer the bonds of 
amity between two countries which were appre- 
hended to be in some danger of coming to hos- 
tilities. In this friendly missive, the people of 
the mother town do not fail to remind the trans- 



80 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

atlantic daughter, that she is indebted to them of 
old for their famous Mr. Cotton, and their more 
famous name. From thence is drawn an argu- 
ment for the peace of the nations to which these 
cities respectively belong. 

His learning, and his ability in putting it to 
good use, made him a special favorite with 
Archbishop Williams. And when that prelate 
was bishop of Lincoln, and also Lord Keeper of 
the Great Seal, being the last ecclesiastic who 
held that office in England, he went to the im- 
perious James I., and made so favorable a report 
of Mr. Cotton's singular worth and learning, that 
the king gave consent that his ministry should 
not be interrupted on account of his non-con- 
formity. And this was very remarkable, when 
we consider that monarch's impetuosity and ex- 
asperation against such as offended in that par- 
ticular. The mystery of Mr. Cotton's impunity 
was not known to Samuel Ward, of facetious 
memory, the author of the " Simple Cobbler." 
He remarked in his pleasant manner, " Of all 
men in the world, I envy Mr. Cotton, of Boston, 
most ; for he doth nothing by way of conform- 
ity, and yet hath his liberty : and I do almost 
every thing that way, and cannot enjoy mine." 

The vicar of Boston was very much respected 
by the earls of Dorchester and Lindsay. These 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. SI 



noblemen being in the vicinity, attending to the 
draining of some part of the Lincolnshire fens, 
came to hear this noted preacher. His text 
that day was Gal. 2 : 20 ; "I am crucified with 
Christ," &c. ; and he was prepared to discourse 
on the duty of living by faith in adversity. But 
considering that these high and mighty lords 
had never been very conversant with adversity, 
he promptly reversed his subject, and expatiated 
on the duty of living by faith in prosperity. It 
is said, that they also heard him discourse on 
civil government, and were greatly captivated 
with the wisdom and spirit by which he spake. 
They assured him of their friendship ; and 
offered, if ever it should be needed, to exert all 
their influence at the royal court in his behalf. 
When these puissant nobles had occasioned 
some scandal by indulging in diversions unsuit- 
able to the Sabbath, they kindly accepted his 
discreet admonitions, and promised reformation. 
His faithful dealing is the more to be com- 
mended, when we take into account the pro- 
found veneration then felt for those who were so 
favored in the accident of birth. We have heard 
old countrymen, advanced in years, tell of the 
awful respect in which nobility was held in 
their young days : so that in attempting to 
speak to a peer of the realm with his star upon 



82 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

his breast, the tongue would cleave to the roof 
of the mouth. ^ The French revolution seems 
to have forever broken down this feeling of 
overpowering veneration for aristocracy. We 
look upon an anointed king with far less emo- 
tion in these times, when reverence for mere 
rank is rapidly passing away. 

Toward the end of his residence in Boston, 
Mr. Cotton was for a whole year disabled from 
preaching, by a quartern ague, which began in 
September, 1630. His physicians advising a 
change of air, he removed to the mansion of the 
earl of Lincoln, another of his noble friends, 
whose Countess was a lady of eminent piety. 
Among their children was the celebrated lady 
Arbella Johnson, and also the lady Susan, wife 
of John Humphrey, one of the assistants. Both 
of these ladies settled, and the former died, in 
this colony of Massachusetts. In the hospitable 
dwelling of their parents, Mr. Cotton recovered 
his health : but lost his estimable wife by the 
same disease, after a happy and religious union 
of eighteen years. About a year after, he mar- 



♦ It is said, that a young lady from the country being ushered into 
the dread presence i>f S;irali, Duchess of Marllwroui,'!!, lost all her self- 
possession, and falling upon her knees, mechanically recited her cus- 
tomary grace at meals : " Lord, make ua suitably thankful for what 
we arc about to receive ! " 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 83 

ried an estimable widow, Mrs. Sarah Story, 
who was an endeared friend of his former wife. 
Good Mr. Norton, speaking of these grave and 
godly matrons, compares them with Euodias 
and Syntyche, " which labored with Paul in 
the gospel." 

Not long after his second marriage, the tem- 
pest, which had been delayed for so many 
years, broke forth. There was in the town a 
dissipated character, Gawain Johnson by name, 
whose irregularities had brought him under the 
notice of the correctional police. Resolved to be 
revenged upon the magistrates by whom he had 
been punished, he went up to London, and filed 
an information against them in that infamous 
tribunal, the High Commission Court. This 
body was styled the " High Commissioners for 
Causes Ecclesiastical : " and was first set up by 
Queen Elizabeth in 1.559. It was composed of 
bishops, privy counselors, officers of state, law- 
yers, deans, and the like, to the number of forty 
or more ; three of whom, usually with a bishop, 
or other dignitary, at their head, were vested 
with full power to inquire into and punish all 
opinions or practices different from those of the 
established Church. All such cases they could 
try, either with or without a jury, the whole 
supremacy and despotism of the monarch being 



84 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

committed into their hands by royal commission. 
Persons informed against by letter only were 
cited before them ; and in trying them, no re- 
gard was had to the statute laws of the realm. 
The accused were tossed about in the vast, 
stormy jjnd most uncertain gulf of the common 
law ; where shipwreck was almost inevitable. 
The most odious of the proceedings in that 
court, in which witnesses were not openly ex- 
amined, was the oath ex officio ; — an oath by 
which the prisoner was required to^answer any 
question which should be put to him, no matter 
how deeply the answer might injure him. If he 
refused to swear, he was severely punished for 
contempt of court ; if he answered, he was con- 
victed on his own confession. This outrage 
was systematically committed against every 
principle of law and justice, requiring that no 
man shall be compelled to criminate himself. 
Hume has justly denounced the High Commis- 
sion as a " real Inquisition ; attended with sim- 
ilar iniquities and cruelties.'"^ Dr. Lingard, 
himself a Romanist, says : *' The chief differ- 
ence consisted in their names. One was the 
court of Inquisition, the other of High Commis- 
sion." t This tribunal, while it lasted, was in 



* Eliz., chap. xli. 

t History of England, vol. v., chap. vi. 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 85 



truth a very efficient substitute for the Inquisi- 
tion, which Du Plessis Mornay energetically 
called, " that hell of the papacy." 

The charge made at the office of this in- 
famous court against the Boston magistrates, 
was for not kneeling at the sacrament, and for 
neglecting some other ceremonies of the like 
importance. The officers of the court required 
that the minister's name should be inserted. 
" Nay," said the informer, Johnson, " the min- 
ister is an honest man, and never did me any 
wrong." But being told that his complaint 
would be thrown out unless it included the 
name of the minister who permitted the alledged 
irregularities, the miserable man, rather than 
lose his revenge, inserted the name of one who 
had never injured him. Upon this, letters mis- 
sive were forthwith despatched to bring ]\Ir. 
Cotton before that dreaded bar. 

The Rev. John Rogers of Dedham, in Eng- 
land, one of the sons of that Marian martyr who 
used to be figured in the rude wood -cuts of the 
New England Primer, was informed of the 
accusation entered against Mr. Cotton. Mr. 
Rogers received the sorrowful tidings just as 
he was going to preach his weekly lecture. In 
his discourse he deeply lamented the occur- 
rence, and broke out, with a sort of prophetic 

VOL. L 8 



86 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

fire, in words to this effect : — " As for that man 
who hath caused a faithful pastor to be driven 
from his flock, he is a wisp used by the hand 
of God for the scouring of his people. But 
mark the words now spoken by a minister of 
the Lord ! I am verily persuaded, that the 
judgments of God will overtake the man that 
hath done this thing ; either he will die under a 
hedge, or something else, more than the ordi- 
nary deaih of men, shall befall him." Those 
old men of God did not hesitate to venture a 
prediction of this kind; for they had full often 
witnessed the wretched end of such characters ; 

"And old experience doth attain, 
To something like prophetic strain." 

and it came accordingly to pass, that this sorry 
informer, very shortly after, died of the plague 
under a hedge in Yorkshire. Through fear of 
contagion, he perished alone, and was left long 
unburied. Our fathers, who were exceedingly 
inquisitive and trustful in such matters, did not 
fail to recognize in this event an evident divine 
retribution from the hand of Him, who, as the 
Psalmist saith, "hath bent his bow, and made 
it ready, — who ordaineth his arrows against ihe 
persecutors." 

Good Mr. Whiting, " the angel of the church 
in Lynn," where he was the first pastor, was 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 87 

himself a native of • old Boston. He wrote a 
biographical sketch of Mr. Cotton, which was 
the basis of John Norton's more extended 
memoir, on which latter work Cotton Mather 
enlarged considerably. To the facts related in 
Mather's very valuable account, the present 
narrative makes very great additions collected 
from every available source. This Mr. Whiting, 
speaking of John Cotton's enemies, who secretly 
plotted, or openly acted, against him in old 
Boston, remarks : — " They all of them were 
blasted, either in their names, or in their estates, 
or in their families, or in their devices, or else 
came to untimely deaths ; which shows how 
God hath owned his servant in his holy labors ; 
and that in the things wherein they dealt proudly 
against him, he would be above them." Doubt- 
less, the avenging providence of God is not to 
be rashly scrutinized. We cannot be too cau- 
tious in the interpretation of such matters. 
And yet a broad induction of facts will justify 
the solemn conclusion, that " verily there is a 
God that judgeth in the earth." His people 
are his charge. " Yea, he hath reproved kings 
for their sakes ; saying. Touch not mine anoint- 
ed, and do my prophets "no harm." 

Mr. Cotton, warned that letters missive were 
issued against him, concealed himself from the 



88 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

easier search of the pursuivants by flight. He 
was aware that, if apprehended, he had nothing 
better to expect than to pine in perpetual impris- 
onment, in which so many of his brethren had 
worn out their shortened days. During his 
concealment, his potent friend, the Earl of Dor- 
chester, or as more commonly called, Dorset, 
who was a thorough courtier, lord chamberlain 
to the queen, and far enough from being a 
Puritan, exerted all his influence in the case. 
But that grinding and remorseless oppressor, 
Laud, who, about this time, was made archbish- 
op of Canterbury, and who on the very day that 
he became primate and metropolitan of all Eng- 
land, received, by a significant coincidence, the 
ofler of a cardinal's hat from Rome, was inexor- 
able. That bitter prelate would often exclaim : 
" that I could meet with Cotton ! " The 
noble earl, perceiving that all his intercessions 
must be unavailing, wrote to the irreproachable 
fugitive, that " if he had been guilty of drunk-, 
enness, or unclean ness, or any such lesser fault, 
he could have obtained his* pardon ; but inas- 
much as he had been guilty of non-conformity 
and puritanism, the crime was unpardonable; " 
and ended with advising him to fly for his safety. 
It is not surprising, after this sample of their 
quality, that Mr. Cotton should long after say : 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 89 

" The ecclesiastical courts are like the courts 
of the high priests and pharisees, which Solo- 
mon, by a spirit of prophecy stileth, dens of 
lions and mountains of leopards. And those 
who have to do with them, have found them 
markets of the sins of the people, the cages of 
uncleanness, the forges of extortion, the taberna- 
cles of bribery." 

There is extant a letter, dated October 3, 
1632, written by Mr. Cotton while under con- 
cealment, to the lady he had but lately married. 
It is here inserted as presenting a confidential 
expression of his feelings at the time. 

Dear &c. If our heavenly Father be pleas'd 
to make our Yoke more heavy than we did so 
soon expect, remember I pray thee what we 
have heard, that our heavenly Husband the 
Lord Jesus, when he 1st called us to Fellow- 
ship with himself, called us unto this Condition, 
to deny ourselves, and to take up our Cross 
daily, to follow him. And truly, tho' this Cup 
be brackish at the first; yet a Cup of God's ming- 
ling is doubtless sweet in the Bottom, to such 
as have learned to make it their greatest Happi- 
ness to partake with Christ, as in his Glory, so 
in the Way that leadeth to it. Where I am 
for the present, I am very fitly and welcomely 
8# 



90 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

accommodated, I thank God : so as I see here I 
might rest desired enough till my Friends at 
Home shall direct further. They desire also to 
see thee here, but that I think it not safe yet, 
till we see how God will deal with our Neigh- 
bours at Home : for if you should now travel 
this Way, I fear you will be watched and dogged 
at the Heels. But I hope shortly God will 
make Way for thy safe Coming. The Lord 
watch over you all for Good, and reveal him- 
self in the Guidance of all our Affairs. So with 
my Love to thee, as myself, I rest ; desirous of 
thy Rest and Peace in him. J. C. 

This letter, written under such circumstances 
of painful separation, imminent peril, and un- 
certainty for the future, betrays no petulant 
impatience or unmanly repinings. It beautifully 
portrays the sublime peacefulness of the mind, 
which, in the hour of adversity, is stayed on 
God. Within six weeks from the writing of the 
above letter, this pious couple was again united, 
though obliged still to live in concealment. 

After earnest prayer for divine direction, and 
much consultation with good men upon the sub- 
ject, Mr. Cotton concluded to seek refuge in 
Holland, whither so many of the Puritan minis- 
ters and people had already fled from the vio- 



LIFE OP JOHN COTTON. 91 

lence of persecution. Some of his Boston 
friends urged him to permit them to sustain and 
protect him, that they might privately enjoy the 
benefit of his ministry, without which they must 
be exposed to great temptation. But the vener- 
able Mr. Dod, an old Puritan famous for his 
piety and his wit, told them, " that the removing 
of a minister was like the draining of a fish- 
pond : the good fish will follow the water ; but 
eels, and other refuse fish, will stick in the 
mud." 

That there were in the pond some good fish, 
with life enough to follow the water, appears 
from Mr. Cotton's book on the " Holinesse of 
Church-Members," printed many years after in 
1650. It is dedicated " to my honored, wor- 
shipful and worthy friends, the Mayor and Jus- 
tices, the Aldermen and Common Council, 
together with the w^hole Congregation and 
Church at Boston." Speaking of old times 
with them, he says ; — " And ye became follow- 
ers of us, and of the Lord ; and showed your- 
selves ensamples in some first fruits of reform- 
ation, unto many neighbor congregations about 
you : 1 Thess. 1 . 6, 7. And though you saw, 
that any small measure of reformation, (which 
then was offensive to the State, and suffered 
under the name of Non-Conformity,) would 



92 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

expose yourselves to some sufferings, unless you 
deserted me, yet I bear you record, you chose 
rather to expose yourselves to charge and hazard 
for many years together, than to expose my 
ministry to silence. And though, at last, in 
that hour and power of darkness, when the late 
High Commission began to stretch forth their 
malignant arm against ns, I was forced to depart 
secretly from you, (from some of you, I say,) 
howbeit, not without the privity and consent of 
the chief, yet sundry of you yielded up your- 
selves, as Ittai to David, to follow the Lord 
whithersoever he should call ; and to go along 
with me, whether to life or death, in this late 
howling wilderness. And though, after my de- 
parture, you were^somewhat carried aside with 
the torrent of the times, yet, I believe, not with- 
out some apprehension of the light of the word 
going before you, in your judgments, to the sat- 
isfaction of your own consciences. And ever 
since that time, wherein the strong hand of the 
Lord, and the maglignancy of the times, had set 
this vast distance of place, and great gulf of seas, 
between us ; yet still you claimed an interest in 
me, and have yearly ministered some real testi- 
mony of your love. And at last, when the 
Lord, of his rich grace, had dispelled the storm 
of malignant church-government, you invited 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 93 

me again and again, to return unto the place and 
work wherein I had walked before the Lord and 
you in former times. But the estate of those 
of you who came along with me, and who there- 
by had most interest in me, could not bear that. 
Nor would my relation to the church here suffer 
it. Nor would my age, now stricken in years, 
nor infirm body, ill-brooking the seas, be able to 
undergo it, without extreme peril of becoming 
unserviceable either to yourselves or others." 

From this document we learn several things, 
which might not otherwise have come to our 
knowledge. It appears, that the affections of 
his old flock clung to their banished minister : 
and that, through some twenty years of absence, 
they annually sent him substantial tokens of 
their anxiety to promote his comfort. We find 
too, that when the execution of William Laud 
and Charles Stuart had removed the bar to his 
return, they sent him such reiterated and urgent 
calls as could be declined only for the most im- 
perative reasons. 

To these reasons there is another to be added. 
While the Long Parliament was at the height 
of its power, before Cromwell had dosed it with 
his " purging colonels," the presbyterial form of 
government was imposed by law on the parishes 
of England. Presbyterianism, at that time, ad- 



94 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

milled persons confessedly unregenerate to the 
Lord's table. In reference to this, Mr. Cotton 
told his importunate friends ; — " The estate of 
your church, admitting more than professed 
saints to the fellowship of the seals, and the 
government of your church subjected to an ex- 
trinsical ecclesiastical power, would have been 
perpetual scruples and torments to my con- 
science, which, knowing the terrors of the Lord, 
and the conviction of my own judgment, I durst 
not venture upon." To this he adds, in his 
charitable, unreproaching manner ; — " Not that I 
misjudge others who can satisfy their conscien- 
ces in a larger latitude : but because every man 
is to be fully persuaded in his own mind, and I 
must live by my own faith. Rom. 14 : 5." 

Mr. Cotton did not lay down his pastoral 
charge in any summary or informal manner. 
He first obtained the consent of his people, so 
far as it was possible to consult them on the 
subject. " On this point," he says, " I conferred 
with the chief of our people, and offered them to 
bear witness to the truth I had preached and 
practiced amongst them, even unto bonds, if they 
conceived it might be any confirmation to their 
faith and patience. But they dissuaded me 
from thai course, and thinking it better for them- 
selves, and for me, and for the Church of God, 



LIFE OP JO h"n cotton. 95 

to withdraw myself from the present storm, and 
to minister in this country [New England, 
whence this letter was written] to such of their 
town as they had sent before hither, and such 
others as were willing to go along with me, or 
to follow after me.'"^ 

Governor Hutchinson has preserved for us a 
letter! to Dr. Williams, Bishop of Lincoln, writ- 
ten by Mr. Cotton, a few weeks before sailing 
for America, for the purpose of resigning his 
vicarage into the prelate's hands. Dr. Williams 
had showed him all the indulgence he could, till 
Laud compelled the reluctant prelate to resort to 
rigorous measures. Mr. Cotton gratefully ac- 
knowledges the diocesan's kindness, gives a 
short account of the drift of his ministry at Bos- 
ton, and assigns the reasons of his departure in 
a manner the most meek and respectful, and yet 
happily blended with a high principled firmness 
and religious independence. This communica- 
tion breathes the deepest solicitude for the wel- 
fare of the flock from which he was torn away. 

Being thus fully released from all obligation 
of duty to his recent charge, he took measures 



* See letter, dated Dec. 3, 16:34, in Hutchinson's Original Papers, 
page 56. 
t Original Papers, p. 249, &c. The letter is dated May 7 : 1633. 



96 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

to effect his escape from his native shores. To 
shun the officers who were on the watch for his 
apprehension, he traveled under an assumed 
name and a change of garb, toward the port 
where he expected to embark for Holland. But 
when he had nearly reached the place, he w^as 
met by one of his relatives, who, by dint of per- 
suasion and entreaty, induced him to betake 
himself to London. 

There were then in that city three pious min- 
isters who considered the imposed ceremonies 
as things in themselves of little consequence, 
and as such submitted to them. One of these 
was Dr. Goodwin, a clergyman of great distinc- 
tion, and afterwards one of the leading divines 
in the renowned Westminster Assembly. The 
cynical Anthony Wood styles him and Dr. Ow- 
en, " the two Atlasses and Patriarchs of Inde- 
pendency." Another of the three alluded to was 
Mr. Thomas Nye, in high repute for learning. 
The other was John Davenport, the founder of 
the New Haven colony, and one of the " chief 
fathers" of New England. These gentlemen 
embraced the opportunity of holding a confer- 
ence with Mr. Cotton. Knowing him to be an 
exceedingly dispassionate and judicious man, 
they made no doubt but that they should con- 
vince him, that it was his duty to conform 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 97 



rather than to leave his country and his flock. 
At this conference he first confuted all the ar- 
guments they could array to justify their con- 
formity ! and then vindicated his own course in 
choosing to undergo so great privations, rather 
than to defile his conscience by acquiescing in 
customs which derogated from the kingly office 
of the great Head of the Church. As the result 
of these discussions, these three able champions 
came entirely over to Mr, Cotton's views. Nor 
does this detract at all from their just reputation, 
but rather enhances it. " For he that is over- 
come of the truth parteth victory with him that 
overcometh, and hath the best share for his own 
part." These men belonged to that class of 
which good Fuller says, that " they count them- 
selves the greatest conquerors, when the truth 
hath taken them captive." The three, not long 
after, themselves became exiles for the truth to 
which they had honorably yielded."^ After Mr. 
Cotton's death, Mr. Davenport gave a glowing 
account of this interesting debate, in which, he 



* This Dr. Goodwin lay wind-bound, in hourly expectation that the 
pursuivants would seize him before the wind would favor his escape 
lo Holland. Distressed as he was for a more propitious gale, he 
cried, " Lord, if thou hast at this time any poor servant of thine who 
wants this wind more than I do another, I do not ask for the chang* 
ingofit: I submit unto it . The wind soon came about, and carried 
him clear from his pursuers. 

VOL. I. 9 



98 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

says, Mr. Cotton " answered with great evi- 
dence of Scripture light, composedness of mind, 
mildness of spirit, constant adhering to his prin- 
ciples, and keeping them unshaken." The trio 
of friends in this amicable contention were struck 
with admiration at his might in the Scriptures, 
his vast and various reading, his prompt memo- 
ry, his ready reply, and his government of his 
own spirit, far beyond what they had " taken 
notice of in any man before him." Mr. Daven- 
port closes by saying; — "The reason of our 
desire to confer with him rather than any other 
touching these weighty points, was our former 
knowledge of his approved godliness, excellent 
learning, sound judgment, eminent gravity, 
candor and sweet temper of spirit, whereby he 
could placidly bear those that differed from him 
in their apprehensions. All which, and much 
more we found ; and glorified God, in him, and 
for him." This description explains the secret 
of Mr. Cotton's uncommon success as a debater, 
and as a resolver of the doubtful and difficult 
questions in his casuistry which were constantly 
submitted to him for solution. Truly, these 
men who are so firmly tenacious of their opin- 
ions, and yet thus maintain them in the spirit of 
love and the meekness of wisdom, are usually 
the most invincible and irresirstible in debate. 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 99 

In John Cotton's " Covenant of Grace," a 
book written long after this, in America, of 
which several editions were printed, there is, in 
that of 1655, an Addr'ess to the reader, by Rev. 
Thomas Allen, minister of St. Edward's, Nor- 
wich, Eng., who a few years before had been 
teacher of the church in Charlestown, Mass. 
The addresser says of the author : "He was a 
man of peace, of a very sweet spirit, and had a 
very special faculty of composing differences in 
the iudo-ments of the brethren. And thus much 
I shall crave liberty to testify of him, that, be- 
sides the multiplicity of occasions which was 
constantly upon him, he was not without care 
about the peace and welfare of the churches 
abroad ; and notwithstanding his so vast a dis- 
tance in body from the churches and saints in 
his native country, yet he had great thoughts in 
heart for the division of his brethren here, being 
seriously studious how to compose and heal 
their breaches. He hath sometimes said unto 
me, being privately together ; — ' Brother, I per- 
ceive there is a great gravamen which the one 
party is much offended at with the other. I 
pray let us study how we may ease and remove 
it.' " 

Mr. Whiting gives him this character as a 
disputant : — " He was of admirable candor, of 



100 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

unparalleled meekness, of rare wisdom, very 
loving even to those that differed in judgment 
from him, yet one that held his own stoutly, 
tightly maintaining and keenly defending what 
himself judged to be the truth." Beware of 
such men, unless you be willing to accord with 
them. 

It is worth mentioning here, that among the 
auditors in that London conference, was Rev. 
Henry Whitfield, rector of Oakley in Surrey, 
who from that time became a conscientious non- 
conformist, and was afterwards the founder of 
the town and church of Guilford, in the New 
Haven colony. 

While secreted at London, by Mr. Davenport 
and other ministers, Mr. Cotton gave up the 
design of proceeding to Holland. He w^as dis- 
couraged from betaking himself to that country, 
for the same reasons which induced Mr. Robin- 
son's Leyden flock to leave it for America. 
Letters from Governor Winthrop, and from the 
infant church in our own Boston, decided him 
to shun the fires of persecution by braving the 
waters of the ocean, then much more formi- 
dable to the voyager than now. 

It was about the middle of July, 1633, when 
Mr. Cotton, with Thomas Hooker and Samuel 
Stone, two ministers of great note, and with a 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 101 

number of his old Boston parishioners, com- 
menced his adventurous voyage. They sailed 
in a vessel called the Griffin, the name of a 
fabled creature, partly eagle and partly lion. 
It was a ship of three hundred tons, having at 
this time about two hundred passengers, of 
whom four died while on the way. 

Mr. Cotton and Mr. Hooker experienced 
much difficulty in getting out of England ; for 
long search had been made for them by the 
emissaries of that odious instrument of all sorts 
of tyranny, the High Commission Court. All 
the ports were waylaid for their apprehension ; 
and at the Isle of Wight, where it was expected 
that the Griffin would have made her last stop- 
page, she was strictly searched by the pur- 
suivants. But the staunch ship afterwards, by 
private agreement, lay off the Downs ; and, grif- 
fin-like, with lion heart and eagle wings, swoop- 
ed upon the prey, and bore it in triumph from 
the disappointed hunters. 

But oh, the sadness of that hour ! when the 
hapless exiles, relieved at last from the haunt- 
ing fear of capture, felt all their love of home 
rise in the strength of that mastering passion. 
Forgetting the bitterness of their lot, and re- 
gardless of the hardships of the future, they 

wept their last farewell to parted friends, and to 
9# 



102 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

the native land they should see no more. Nat- 
ural affection was strong ; but gracious affection 
was stronger. The love of Christ constrained 
them. God counted their bitter tears ; and they 
have found them each a pearl in heaven. " And 
Jesus answered and said, Verily I say unto you, 
there is no man that hath left house, or breth- 
ren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or 
children, or lands, for my sake and the gospel's, 
but he shall receive an hundred-fold now in this 
time, houses, and brethren and sisters, and 
mothers, and children, and lands, with persecu- 
tions ; and in the world to come, eternal life." 

We almost envy our fathers for their distress- 
ing opportunity of evincing the strength, sin- 
cerity and purity of their love to Jesus, before 
they went to meet him joyfully at his judgment- 
seat. And is there no way, in which the ten- 
derness and constancy of our love may be put 
to decisive proof ? Can we do nothing to show 
that our hearts arc wholly given to the Lord ? 
Aye, by crucifying our bosom-sins, by pure and 
holy living, by unremitted efforts for the salva- 
tion of men, by our utmost exertions to promote 
the Church's grand mission work of the world's 
conversion, by ceaseless sacrifices joyfully made 
in the holy cause of benevolence, — by these, we 
too may prove that Jesus has full possession of 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 103 

our souls. Thus may we make it manifest, 
that, in blood and in spirit, we are the sons of 
the pilgrims. This shall argue for us, that we 
are ready, if persecution should arise, to suffer 
what our fathers endured : — that we are ready to 
walk, like them, with firm, unfaltering step, 
through pains and perils for conscience' sake : 
that we are ready to follow on, through despoil- 
ment, exile, bonds and death, to the celestial 
throne, and the crown eternal. 



104 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 



CHAPTER V. 

Voyage lo America. Birth of Seaborn Cotton. Arrival at Bostorj. 
Small beginnings. Interest felt in Mr. Cotton's coming. Admi*- 
slon to the church. Installation. Laying on of hands, why used. 
Distinction between the oflices of pastor and teacher. Not two 
orders in the ministry, but ditferent employments of the same 
order. " God's promise lo his Plantations." Mr. Cotton's ser- 
vices in giving form and order to ecclesiastical aind civil affairs. 
Utility of order. 

It was about the middle of July, in 1633, when 
Mr. Cotton commenced his voyage. Both he 
and Mr. Hooker preserved their disguise, till 
they were so far over the main ocean, that they 
could safely disclose who they were. Mr. 
Stone, who was much the youngest, and f^r 
whom the search was not so furious, performed 
all the public religious duties of the ship's com- 
pany, till his companions could resume their 
character as preachers, and officiate in their 
turns. 

This was a richly freighted ship, bearing a 
large part of the fortune of New England. Our 
pun-loving ancestors observed, at her coming, 
that God had supplied them with three neces- 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 106 

sary commodities : " Cotton for their clothing-, 
Hooker for their fishing, and Stone for their 
building." During the voyage, they usually 
had three services every day ; which was, per- 
haps, the first example of a " protracted meet- 
ing." When they had been a month at sea, 
Mr. Cotton, whose first wife died childless, 
became a father. This, his eldest child, re- 
ceived the name Seaborn, in commemoration of 
the mercies attending his birth. Seaborn Cot- 
ton lived to be a highly useful and honored 
minister of the gospel. There were other chil- 
dren born on the same passage. At the end of 
seven weeks, which was then regarded as a re- 
markably expeditious and prosperous voyage, 
they landed at what is now the good old city of 
Boston, on the third day of September, 1633. 

This place had then been settled three years. 
Governor Dudley says, that the first settlers, 
previous to their coming hither, had already 
determined to name the place they should fix 
upon after the scene of Mr. Cotton's pastoral 
labors, and in compliment to him, with the hope 
that it might be some little inducement to him to 
come there himself. The compliment, however, 
at the time, was not so very flattering. For so 
forlorn and unimposing was this little out-of-the- 
way settlement, that our fathers, who delighted 



106 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

in puns, anagrams, alliterations, and other 
modes of playing wpon words, used rather 
familiarly to call it Lost-town. .Let them be 
excused, if, by such pleasantries, they some- 
times sought to alleviate the discomforts of their 
lot. The place soon began to wear a more cheer- 
ing aspect ; and flourished more and more, till 
it far exceeded in importance the parent-town 
whose name it inherited. Our elder writers 
ascribe much of its early prosperity to the wis- 
dom, conduct and credit of Mr. Cotton; who 
seems to have had something of the talent of 
the Athenian statesman, who, when laughed at 
because he had no skill to touch the lute„ 
retorted that he knew not how to fiddle ; but he 
knew how to raise a small city into a powerful 
state. In New England, " a little one became 
a thousand, a small one a strong nation." 

Just before his arrival, the people had been 
holding a special season of fasting and prayer, 
urging their covenant with God as a reason 
why he should send them a spiritual guide, to 
be unto them, like Hobab to the tribes of Israel, 
" as eyes in the wilderness." Their supplica- 
tions were answered in the gift of this " able 
minister of the New Testament." Mr. Cotton 
was then about forty-eight years of age, and 
ripe in wisdom, knowledge, experience and 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 107 

grace. At his coming, his services were called 
for in different directions. His great capacities 
for usefulness were considered to be the com- 
mon property of the whole colony ; and it was 
at first proposed, that his support should be pro- 
vided for from the colonial treasury, in consid- 
eration of the public benefit expected to accrue 
from his labors. This motion however, was, 
very properly, overruled. The magistrates and 
other leading men decided, that this great light 
must be set in the chief candlestick ; and, 
within a fortnight, designated him to be Teacher 
of the First Church in Boston, of which the Rev. 
John Wilson was then Pastor, 

Mr. Cotton was first to be admitted to the 
church. This was an interesting scene. There 
was a stated religious service held on the Sat- 
urday evenings. At the first of these meetings 
after his landing, he, by request, took part in 
the discussion of the question, which, on that 
occasion, happened to be in reference to the 
-church. He expatiated upon the diversities in 
the spiritual state and grades of purity of difler- 
€nt churches. He showed from the Song of 
Solomon 6 : 8, that some churches are as queens, 
some as concubines, and some as virgins. After 
this, he and his wife were propounded for ad- 
mission. 



lOS LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

On the Lord's day following, he conducted 
the exercises of public worship in the afternoon. 
He then expressed his desire to make a confes- 
sion of his faith, according to usage. His con- 
fession related chiefly to the subject of baptism, 
which he then desired for his child. He gave 
his reasons for not baptizing it while at sea ; 
from which it appears, that he then held that 
the sacraments can only be administered in a 
settled congregation, or organized church ; and 
also, that a minister, notwithstanding his official 
character, can dispense the seals only in his 
own congregation. On this last point, at least, 
he afterwards changed his views so far as to 
maintain that a minister micfht ff'ive the sacra- 
ments in a church which is destitute of the 
proper officers. 

Mr. Cotton next requested the admission of 
his wife, to whose qualifications for membership 
he bore "a modest testimony." He craved that 
she might be excused from making a public 
oral profession of her faith, as was then the cus- 
tom of the church. He regarded the practice as 
' unfit for women's modesty," and contrary to 
the apostle's rule. To her examination in pri- 
vate by the elders, he had no objections. So she 
was asked, whether she consented to the con- 
fession of faith made by her husband, and con- 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 109 

curred in his desire for admission. Upon her 
answering in the affirmative, they were both 
admitted by vote of the church. Their child 
was then baptized by Mr. Wilson, the father 
himself presenting it. At the baptism of an- 
other child, which took place at the same time, 
he gave it as a reason for disusing the unscript- 
ural and unnatural custom of employing spon- 
sors, that the ordinance was designed as the 
" parents' incentive for the help of their faith." 

A month afterwards, October 10, 1633, a day 
of fasting was observed. Thomas Leverett, 
" an ancient, sincere professor," an old parish- 
ioner of Mr. Cotton, and his fellow-voyager to 
this country, was chosen ruling elder ; and Mr. 
Firmin, " a godly man," was elected deacon. 
These officers were ordained by imposition of 
the hands of the presbytery : that is to say, the 
pastor, and such ruling elders as were pre- 
viously in office. The pastor and other officers 
of each particular church constituted the presby- 
tery of that church ; and in this sense alone can 
the term Presbyterian apply to our Congrega- 
tional Churches. 

This business being over, Mr. Cotton was 

then publicly chosen by the Church to be their 

Teacher, which was made manifest by the 

members' lifting up their hands. Next, the 

VOL. I. 10 



110 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 



pastor, Wilson, demanded of him whether he 
accepted that call. After a pause, he replied to 
the effect, that he knew "his unworthiness and 
insufficiency for the place ; yet, recounting the 
particular passages of God's providence which 
concurred to call him to it, he felt himself con- 
strained in duty to accept it. Upon this, the 
pastor and two ruling elders laid their hands 
upon his head, and the pastor prayed. Then, 
removing their hands, they again placed them 
on his head ; and calling him by name, from 
thenceforth separated him to the said office in 
the name of the Holy Ghost, laid upon him the 
charge of the congregation, and in this signifi- 
cant manner indued him with all the privileges 
of his station. Last of all, they formally 
blessed him. The presbytery of the church 
having thus completed its part in this interest- 
ing ceremony, the ministers of the neighboring 
churches there present gave him, at the pastor's 
request, the right hand of fellowship. The pas- 
tor finally made a mutual stipulation between 
the church and its newly inducted teacher. 

In respect to the solemn imposition of hands, 
just spoken of, or ordination as it is often termed, 
we must observe that it does not follow of course, 
that Mr. Cotton renounced the ministry he had 
formerly received in the Church of England. 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. Ill 

This may seem to be the natural supposition. 
But it must be borne in mind, that when, three 
years before, Mr. Wilson was constituted teacher 
of the same church, it was done in a similar man- 
ner ; but with a protestando, that it was no reor- 
dination, as we now understand the term. These 
are the words of Governor Winthrop, who as- 
sisted on that occasion : " We used imposition 
of hands, hut with this protestation by all, that 
it was only as a sign of election and confirma- 
tion, not of any intent that Mr. Wilson should 
renounce his ministry he received in England." '^ 
This is sufficiently explicit. And when the same 
Mr. Wilson, about one year prior to Mr. Cot- 
ton's arrival, was made pastor of the same 
church in which he had been thus constituted 
teacher, this too was done by the laying on of 
the hands of the ruling elder and the deacons. 
Of course, in this case, no protestation was 
needed, for it is impossible to suppose that the 
Church would nullify its own previous ordi- 
nance. Nor was any express protestation neces- 
sary in Mr. Cotton's case ; for it had already 
been established, by the precedent in Mr. Wil- 
son's instance, that no renunciation of his pre- 
vious ministerial authority was intended. 

* Winthrop's History of New England, vol. 1, p. 32, 33, Savage's 
edition. 



112 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

The first installation in New England in 
which the laying on of hands was omitted, was 
that of Kev. Charles Morton, settled over the 
First Church in Charlestown, the 5th of No- 
vember, 16S6. ]\lr. Morton thus alludes to the 
subject in a letter written some three years after 
to the right honorable Hugh Boscawen, Esq., in 
England : " Though their custom has been a 
new imposition of hands upon every new call to 
the exercise of the ministry, yet to us, who 
came from Europe, Mr. Bailey"^ and myself, it 
was abated. And for aught I can perceive, they 
mind more the substance of religion, than the 
circiimstances oi some men's private opinions."! 
Dr. Increase Mather gave the charge, " and 
spoke in praise of the Congregational way, and 
said. Were he as Mr. Morton, he would have 
hands laid on him." Rev. Joshua Moodey 1: 
also, in his prayer, alluded to the subject, and 
intimated, that •' that which would have been 
grateful to many, namely, laying on of hands, 
was omitted." <$> From that time, the precedent 



* Installed October 6, 1686, in Waterlown, Mass ; afterwards 
pastor of the First Church in Boston. 

t This letter ia transcribed in part into a very admirable work by 
Samuel Mather, D. D., called " An Apology for the Liberties of the 
Churches in Now England." Boston, 1733, p. 148. 

1 Pastor of the First Church in Boston, 

§ Budington's History of the First Church in Charlestown, p. 102, 
103. 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 113 

set by Mr. Morton, in the case of resettling 
ministers who had been previously ordained, 
was followed more and more, till it became the 
constant practice. Previous to this change, 
ministers, in the intervals between one pastoral 
care and another, were regarded as they are 
now. They were spoken of, and treated as 
ministers, and exercised their function as occa- 
sion required. Reimposition, when used, was 
not intended to restore the ministerial charac- 
ter, as though that had been lost ; but to desig- 
nate the person to a special charge. 

Our fathers neither regarded imposition of 
hands as an act that could not be repeated, nor 
as essential to the validity of an ordination. 
Theodore Beza, Calvin's famous successor at 
Geneva, never received it ; and, under John 
Knox's influence, it was for some time disused 
in Scotland. It was not an act that could not be 
repeated. They viewed it simply as a solemn 
designation of the individual to a particular 
office or dut}^ in the church, and as a sign of 
investiture. They held, that every true minis- 
ter must, in the first place, be inwardly called to 
the work by the Spirit of God, as Aaron was ; 
and then he must be outwardly called by some 
church of Christ. They held that this power 
of external vocation, \yhich belongs to the 
10*^ 



114 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

church, is far superior to ordination, which, in- 
deed, is included in it, as the less is included in 
the greater. The church being able to give a 
lawful calling to a minister, is much more able 
to carry that call into effect by the simple cere- 
mony used for that purpose by the brethren in 
the apostles' time. Hence they maintained the 
validity of what is sometimes called lay-ordina- 
tion ; but which they, regarding it as the act of 
the whole body of the church, the original 
source of all spiritual power, considered as hav- 
ing in it more of ecclesiastical authority than if 
performed only by some of its officers acting by 
delegated powers. Accordingly, in some very 
few instances, the ceremony was performed, 
even in the presence of numerous ministers, 
only by the presbytery, or officers of the partic- 
ular church, occasionally assisted by some of 
the brethren. This was done merely by way of 
asserting and establishing the great pilnciple, 
that the power of ordination resides in, and 
emanates from, the Church. After this had 
been sufficiently understood, it became the inva- 
riable custom, and so continues to this day, that 
the ceremony should he performed by other 
ministers. But though administered by coun- 
cils, it is still regarded as done solely at the re- 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 115 



quest of the church which convenes the council 
for that purpose. 

The distinction between the duties of the 
pastor and teacher, is thus defined in the Cam- 
bridge Platform : " The pastor's special work 
is, to attend to exhortation, and therein to ad- 
minister a word of wisdom ; the teacher is to 
attend to doctrine, and therein to administer a 
word of knowledge." Both are empowered to 
dispense the sacraments, to execute church- 
censures, and to preach the Word, as to which 
duties, " they are alike charged withal." ^ The 
pastor, on whom chiefly devolved the care of 
the flock when out of the pulpit, was expected 
to spend his strength mostly in exhortation, 
persuading and rousing the church to a wise 
diligence in the Christian calling. The teacher 
w^as to indoctrinate the church, and labor to in- 
crease the amount of religious knowledge. His 
workshop was the study ; while the pastor 
toiled in the open field. Thus Mr. Cotton 
gave himself up to reading and preparation for 
the instruction of his people. Twelve hours of 
close application he used to call " a student's 
day; " and such a day's work he usually per- 
formed, secluded among his books. For intelli- 



* Chap. VI., sec. 5. 



116 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

gence respecting the state of his flock, he 
depended mostly upon the pastor and ruling- 
elders. He received many visits, but seldom 
made any himself. Perhaps it may help to a 
clearer understanding of the difference in the 
nature of these two offices, to state, that when a 
case of excommunication occurred, it belonged 
to the pastor to conduct the business and pro- 
nounce the sentence, if the offence related to 
immorality or " disorderly walking ; " but if it 
were a matter of heretical or erroneous opin- 
ions, it vvas expected that the teacher would 
preside. 

In the estimation of our fathers, the pastor's 
station was considered to have rather the prior- 
ity in importance and dignity. It has been a 
source of perplexity with some, how this could 
be, seeing that the teacher was sometimes much 
more distinguished, as to his attainments and 
general character, than his colleague ; as hap- 
pened in this case of Mr. Cotton as compared 
with Mr. Wilson. But it seems to be very in- 
telligible, that a man may be pre-eminently 
endowed with the qualifications needful in a 
religious teacher, and yet be comparatively unfit 
for the more active duties of the parochial care. 
On the other hand, a man may be admirably 
fitted to watch as a pastor over the flock of God, 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 117 

who is comparatively disqualified to feed that 
flock with knowledge and understanding. 

It must not be supposed, that our fathers insti- 
tuted two orders in the ministry. They firmly 
held, that all ordained ministers were of equal 
rank ; and that there is not the slightest supe- 
riority of one over another, except such as 
results from superior wisdom, knowledge, piety, 
zeal, and reputation arising from either or all of 
these, by which individuals are occasionally ele- 
vated to a higher degree of estimation and influ- 
ence than iheir brethren generally. With them, 
the terms elder, pastor and bishop, were synony- 
mous and interchangeable, as they are in the 
New Testament, where they are used as differ- 
ent names for the same office. The distinction 
between the duties of the pastor and teacher was 
merely a division of the labors belonging to their 
common calling ; each taking the part for which 
he was best qualified, without considering wheth- 
er, in personal matters, he were the greater or 
more honored of the two. The precedence was 
accorded to the pastor, because the part of the 
work assigned to him is essentially the more im- 
portant part. For " the word of wisdom," in 
which he was to deal, must be considered as 
more honorable than " the word of knowledge,'* 
which was the allotted province of the other. 



118 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

Without any disparagement of the latter, we 
may assent to the poet's estimate of the relative 
value of each : — 

"Knowledge dwells 
In heads replete with thoughts of other men ; 
Wisdom in minds attentive to their own. 
Knowledge, a rude, unprofitable mass, 
The mere materials with which wisdom builds, 
Till smoothed, and squared, and fitted to his place, — 
Does but encumber what it seems to enrich. 
Knowledge is proud, that he has learned so much ; 
Wisdom is humble, that he knows no more." 

In this matter we may give more weight to 
an opinion of Martin Luther's, recorded in his 
" Table Discourses," as it seems in some sort to 
be a decision against himself. " One asked 
Luther, Which were greater and better — to 
strive against the adversaries, or to admonish 
and lift up the weak ? He answered and said, 
' Both are very good and necessary ; but it is 
somewhat greater and better to comfort the 
faint-hearted.' " 

The usage which now prevails in our churches 
does not so much set aside the distinction be- 
tween pastoral and teaching duties, as blend 
both offices in one person, who is both pastor 
and teacher to his congregation. Most of our 
churches think themselves too small to require 
the labors of two officers, and too poor to sus- 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 119 

tain them. It were well, if they generally took 
better care of the single minister in whom these 
duties are united. Indeed these duties nat- 
urally run into each other, and it is impossible 
precisely to point out their bound-marks. It is 
now expected that doctrine shall be preached 
practically, and that practice be preached doc- 
trinally. It is expected that each shall be so 
discussed, as that one shall involve the other, 
and their mutual relations be distinctly ex- 
hibited. 

Perhaps it would be well for larger and more 
affluent churches to restore the ancient usage, 
which our earlier churches practiced so far as 
they were able. It is very rare to find a person 
who combines the requisites of a pastor and a 
teacher in a high and equal degree. And the 
killing attempt to unite each sort of excellence, 
where nature had conferred but one, has often 
occasioned a lamented waste of life and talents. 
The distinction recognized by our fathers still 
exists, as it must in the nature of things. How 
often it is said, Such an one is a fine preacher, 
but no pastor ; and that another is a faithful 
and successful pastor, but does not excel so 
much in the pulpit. And their respective hear- 
ers, who have sense enough to know that they 



120 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

cannot have every kind of perfection in one 
man, try to be thankful for such as they have. 

About this time Mr. Cotton preached a ser- 
mon, which has been repeatedly printed under 
the title, '* God's Promise to his Plantations." 
Its object is to exhibit the reasons which may 
justify so serious a step as the forming of a new 
settlement, like that in which he and his asso- 
ciates were engaged. Its chief felicity, how- 
ever, is the text, " Moreover I will appoint a 
place for my people Israel, and I will plant 
them, that they may dwell in a place of their 
own, and move no more."^ Whatever fastidious 
critics may think of our forefathers' antiquated 
sermons, it cannot be denied that they had a 
singularly happy faculty of finding appropriate 
texts for every occasion. Mr. Cotton's selec- 
tion, in the instance now referred to, had the 
additional merit of being fulfilled in the result. 
In our fathers and their posterity, was fulfilled 
that which was spoken by the prophet of the 
Lord : " He hath cast the lot for them, and his 
hand hath divided it unto them by line ; they 
shall possess it forever, from generation to gen- 
eration shall they dwell therein. The wilder- 
ness and the solitary place shall be glad for 

* 2 bam. 7 : 10. 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 121 

them ; and the desert shall rejoice, and blossom 
as the rose. It shall blossom abundantly and 
rejoice, even with joy and singing." 

At the time of Mr. Cotton's arrival, the eccle- 
siastical and civil affairs of the colony were in a 
confused plight. Under his advice, the state of 
affairs improved so rapidly, and became so well 
arranged, as to give some countenance to the 
expression of one by no means friendly to what 
he calls " the innovating genius of the great Cot- 
ton," and who speaks of him as "sovereign in 
his dogmas, and absolute in power." One of 
our oldest historians has said, " Such was the 
authority he had in the hearts of the people, 
that whatever he delivered in the pulpit was 
soon put into an order of court, if of a civil, or 
set up as a practice in the church, if of an ec- 
clesiastical concernment."^ 

Our Congregational churches are greatly in- 
debted to him for that pre-eminent liberty they 
enjoy. The liberty and power which Christ, 
the King, had vested in his people, had for ages 
been wrested away by men who, like all usurp- 
ers, proved to be tyrants ; and turned, as the 
Puritans said, " the Lord's house into a house 
of Lords," where they domineered over the 



* Hubbard'a History of New England. 
VOL. T. 11 



V22 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

faith and consciences of the disciples. The 
rightful power and freedonn of the churches was, 
by Mr. Cotton, deduced afresh from the Script- 
ures, and fully re-established in practice. Our 
churches have ever since been nobly jealous and 
tenacious of that free ecclesiastical order which 
Christ conferred upon them, and for whose 
restoration they are indebted, under God, to Mr. 
Cotton and his pious and learned associates. 

An eccentric preacher of the Wesleyan per- 
suasion, who has been for some time deceased, 
is said to have publicly characterized the most 
numerous denominations in New England in 
this manner : " The watchword of the Congre- 
gationalists is. Order ! order ! That of the 
Baptists is, Water ! water ! And that of the 
Methodists is, Fire ! fire ! " We have good 
reason to be satisfied with our part of this 
description. For water and fire are good ser- 
vants, but very bad masters ; or, as the Duke of 
Bridgewater was wont to say, " They are the 
best of friends, but the worst of enemies." On 
the other hand, "order is heaven's first law." 
It is this which makes all the difllerence between 
the stately walls of the temple, and heaps of 
stones and building lumber. Ben Johnson sen- 
tentiously observes : " It is only the disease of 
the unskillful, to think rude things greater than 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 123 

polished, or scattered more numerous than com- 
posed." And Dryden's rhyme affords us a 
valuable precept : — 

" Set all things in their own peculiar place ; 
And know that order ia the greatest grace." 

Richard Hooker rejoiced, on his death -bed, at 
the prospect of soon entering a world of order. 
And doubtless the church on earth will more 
closely resemble the church in heaven, when 
every minister and every member shall be, as 
godly John Norton says Mr. Cotton was, " like 
the heavenly bodies, always in motion ; but 
Btill careful to keep within his proper sphere." 
The God whom we worship and serve, " is not 
the author of confusion, but of peace, as in all 
churches of the saints," 



124 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON 



CHAPTER VI. 

Principles of Congregational Church PolUy. Nature of the Church. 
Simplicity of worship instituted by the New Testament. Early 
innovations and perversions. Reformation in England incom- 
plete. Diversities among the Puritans, some at either extreme. 
Massachusetts Colonists shunned extremes. John Cotton's ' Keys 
of the Kingdom of Heaven.' Cambridge Platform, 1648. Subject 
proposed and divided. 1. Nature of the Church and its privileges 
Origin of the name 'Congregational.' Letter to Skelion. Primi- 
tive Churches were parochial and independent. Primitive order 
restored in New England. The Church a monarchy democratically 
administered. Connection and communion of independent Church- 
es. Dr. Heylin. Cotton's objections to the term 'Independency.' 
Opposition of Congregationalists to ' Brownism.' Cotton's reply 
to Baillie. John Robinson's advice. Thomas Shepard. True 
idea of Church unity. H. Nature and powers of the ministry. 
O/Ficers of two sorts. The first order. Cotton's view. The second 
order, or deacons. Apostolical succession discussed. Bishop 
Hoadley. Archb. Whately. Bishop of Hereford. Macaulay. Or- 
dination, what it is. Archbishop Cranmer. Bishop Burnet. Lu- 
ther. Popular election of officers. Effect of ordination. Our 
forefathers free from the hierarchal temper. HL Nature and forms 
of public worship. What is prayer. Unlawful to iryipose forms. 
Origin of liturgies. Lord Say and Seal Origin of English litur- 
gy . Rejected by our fathers. Inconveniences of it. The use of 
sacraments. Our fathers' discipline commended. 

A ciiAPTKR or two will here be given to an ac- 
count of the principles and merits of the system 
of church government instituted by Mr. Cotton 
and his associates in New England. Their 



LIFE OP JOHN COTTON. 125 

views and practices will be presented, avoiding, 
as far as may be, all controverting of the opin- 
ions of others. 

The Church, as they viewed it, is the living 
temple of God. The precious material, where- 
with it is constructed, is hewn from the quarry 
of human nature. The massive blocks had there 
lain shapeless and senseless, and altogether dead 
in trespasses and sins. But the Holy Ghost, 
acting "by means of the fire and hammer of God's 
Word, hath separated them from the formless 
and lifeless mass, and hath squared and fitted 
them for their respective places, and hath en- 
tered into them and quickened them with an 
everlasting life, and hath joined them in vital 
union to Christ, that living Rock of salvation, 
that head-stone of the corner, that eternal foun- 
dation-ledge of Zion. Thus they, " as lively 
stones, are built up a spiritual house," for "spir- 
itual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus 
Christ." 

The grand temple at Jerusalem, which, allow- 
ing for diflference of material, was modeled after 
the plan of the tabernacle of Moses, was intended 
to serve " unto the example and shadow of heav- 
enly things." It was a type of the celestial or 
spiritual sanctuary, " of the true tabernacle, 

which the Lord pitched, and not man." Hence 
11# 



126 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

the care with which it was constructed to accord 
precisely with a prescribed model, " as Moses 
was admonished of God when he was about to 
make the tabernacle ; for, See, saith he, that 
thou make all things according to the pattern 
showed to thee in the mount." The idea of the 
worldly sanctuary is wholly taken from the 
heavenly sanctuary. 

The instituted worship of God under the older 
Testament, abounded in forms and ceremonies 
which had all of them a moral significance em- 
bodying some divine truth, or shadowing out 
some celestial reality. But even that ritual 
must have nothing of human origin superadded. 
The Pharisees brought in many innovations de- 
rived by tradition of the elders. But Jesus 
repeats, with approbation, the sentence of the 
prophet against them : — " In vain do they wor- 
ship me, teaching for doctrines the command- 
ments of men." Mark the contrast here ; — 
human traditions can never constitute a worship 
acceptable to God. Therefore God required 
that his altar should be built only of unhewn 
stones ; and declared that whosoever lifted up a 
tool upon it had polluted it. The purity of di- 
vine worship is defiled by every admixture of 
man's inventions and devices. 

The instituted worship of the New Testa- 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 127 

ment, delights not in figurative pomps and 
shows, but in plain and literal truth. Its ordi- 
nances are few and simple, because it rejoices, 
not in the " shadows of good things to come," 
but in the " very image of the things" them- 
selves. Here too, we are to see, that all things 
be made according to the divine pattern, and 
kept free from men's contrivances and tradition- 
ary enlargements. The worship of the church 
is to be fashioned after the New Testament ex- 
emplar. We have there a fair transcript of the 
pattern in the mount, a true copy of the ground 
plan and elevations. To follow this, will be 
unquestionably safe. To depart from it, will be 
certainly to go wrong. It is not enough to jus- 
tify such a usage in divine worship, to say that 
there is nothing in the Bible expressly against 
it. "The truth is," as Johr^ Norton tersely 
says, " there is enough against it, if there be 
nothing for it." 

The apostles, " as wise master-builders," left 
a fabric of doric strength and simplicity. But 
the fair edifice soon began to be weakened and 
marred by tasteless changes. And the spiritual 
architects of the middle ages made sad havoc of 
the venerable pile. Much of it was rased to the 
very foundation : and what was buiU instead, 
bore the marks of a modern and a meaner style. 



12S LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

The work went on, till the straggling structure 
presented a strange mixture of the handiwork of 
different ages and nations. Some remains of 
the primitive vastness and simplicity were still 
visible : but oddly blended with Gothic pillars, 
and Saxon arches, and Norman windows, and 
Romanesque towers. Most of what was left of 
the original building was covered up by cum- 
brous and uncouth additions, and rudely daubed 
with untempered mortar, or finely plastered over 
with Italian stucco. 

In the first times of the Protestant reformation, 
much was done toward removing the huge mass 
of innovations, and restoring the more ancient 
order. But in England, the work of restitution 
stopped all too soon. The reformation of doc- 
trine was gloriously effected : but the reforma- 
tion of order and worship fell far short of 
recovering the primitive purity. The Puritans 
felt that the work must go on much farther, be- 
fore the just and necessary authority of Christ 
could be re-established in his kingdom. They 
came at once to the right principle, that the 
Bible is our only safe and sufficient guide in 
ecclesiastical practice, as well as in articles of 
belief. 

When our fathers reached these shores, they 
had a general idea of the nature of that instituted 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 129 

worship which they proposed to set up in con- 
formity with the usage of the primitive Church, 
in accordance with the pattern in the mount. 
The details of the plan they had not as yet had 
opportunity to study, nor had they come to an 
entire agreement. They were fully determined 
that every thing should be arranged by the rule 
of Scripture : but they found some difficulty in 
the application of this rule, till experience and 
practice imparted the requisite skill. 

There was much diversity of sentiment among 
the Puritans. Some there were who still con- 
formed, though very discontentedly, with what 
they felt to be abuses, but which they hoped to 
see purged away by the Church herself. There 
were others who conformed in all points, except 
some two or three. Others still refused con- 
formity in half a dozen points ; and others again, 
as many more. Some went so far as to separate 
entirely from the Church of England, wholly 
disowning it as a true Church of God. 

The Puritans who formed the Massachusetts 
colony shunned either extreme. On the one 
hand, they refused to conform to the abuses 
which were retained in the mother church : and 
on the other hand, they resolutely protested, on 
innumerable occasions, that they were no sepa- 
ratists, and that they were in full communion 



130 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

with all that was right and true in the Churches 
of England, or any other country. Though, at 
first, there was considerable diversity of senti- 
ment on minor points among themselves, they, 
as the light of truth shone progressively brighter, 
came to an increasing agreement of views. 
Their practices, at first, from necessity, some- 
what uncertain, were modified by degrees, as 
their experience and their knowledge of the 
Scripture teachings on the subject became en- 
larged. But they soon settled down into the 
usages which have so long been maintained in 
our churches. 

Their first printed guide in ecclesiastical mat- 
ters was John Cotton's celebrated book, entitled, 
" The Keyes of the Kingdom of Heaven." This 
work has been recently republished by one of 
our enterprising booksellers ; and a treatise so 
curious and instructive ought to have a wide 
circulation. It is chiefly interesting as a dem- 
onstration, that every individual church, with its 
own officers, is the depository of "the power of 
the keys." In other words, all the ecclesiastical 
rights and powers which Christ has given to his 
Church, are given to every regularly constituted 
independent church. 

In describing the metes and bounds of church 
power, Mr. Cotton argues thjjit, as in the State, 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 131 

there is a division of powers into several hands, 
which are to concur in all acts of common con- 
cern, and which arrangement results in a heal- 
thy constitution of the body politic. This book 
maintains, that a church, duly organized with 
its own proper officers, has within itself all that 
is necessary to its continuance and well-being, 
and to the management of its own elections, ad- 
missions, and censures. Elders and brethren 
are the constituent members of this sacred cor- 
poration. The elders are entrusted with gov- 
ernment, the brethren are invested with privilege. 
The church is so to be ruled by its elders who 
are over it in the Lord, that without them noth- 
ing may ordinarily be done, and that they may 
have a negative upon the votes of the fraternity, 
and that they alone may authoritatively preach 
and administer sacraments : — yet are the breth- 
ren to be so upheld in their liberties, that, unless 
with their consent, nothing of common concern 
may be imposed upon them. Because particu- 
lar churches may abuse their power, the book of 
the keys asserts the need of church communion 
m synods or councils, which may determine, 
declare or enjoin such things as will correct 
abuses or disorders in the offending congrega- 
tions. But still to such churches themselves 
must be left the formal acts which are requisite 



132 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

for carrying out the advice of the council. If 
such advice should be scandalously and obsti- 
nately refused, then it will be the duty of the 
council to withdraw communion from the contu- 
macious church. 

Tliis is a summary of the main positions of 
that once celebrated book ; and these positions 
are sustained by the Cambridge Platform, except 
what relates to the claim of a veto-power in the 
elders; on which Mr. Cotton soon ceased to in- 
sist. 

Soon after its publication, the famous Dr. 
Owen undertook to confute it ; instead of which, 
quite contrary to his expectation, it confuted and 
converted him. While speaking of its effect 
upon his mind, he makes the following remark : 
" And, indeed, this way of impartial examining 
all things by the Word, comparing causes with 
causes, and things Avith things, laying aside all 
prejudicate respects unto persons, or present 
traditions, is a course that I would admonish all 
to beware of, who would avoid the danger of 
being made Independents.'"^ 

The " Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven," was 
the standard book of New England church dis- 
cipline, till the Cambridge Platform was brought 



* A Review of ihc true nature of schism. By John Owen, D. D., 
cliapler II. 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 133 

forth in 164S, by a synod which sublimely closed 
its proceedings with singing " the song of Mose3 
and the Lamb," in the fifteenth chapter of the 
Revelation. 

Since the Cambridge Platform was adopted, 
the custom of our churches has varied in a few 
particulars from what is recommended there. 
Thus the Platform advises that each church 
should have its pastor, its teacher, and its ruling 
elder, as well as its deacons. And this arrange- 
ment, for a while, was generally kept up. But 
before long, the offices of pastor and teacher 
were merged in one : or rather, one person filled 
them both : and the duties of the ruling elder, 
which principally related to discipline, were 
practically devolved in the smaller churches up- 
on the pastor and deacons; and in the larger 
churches, upon a committee chosen for such 
purposes. 

It is not my object to give a complete descrip- 
tion of all the usages of Congregationalism at 
the present day. To do this, with the grounds 
and reasons of those usages, would require a 
volume by itself. Nor is it necessary. Every 
one who wishes to examine the matter, may 
find all that is important in some of the older 
and of the more recent publications, where 
all the information necessary has been la- 
VOL. I. 12 



134 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

boriously collected, and arranged with admi- 
rable judgment and care. 

All that will now be attempted, is a general 
description of the leading features of the church 
government adopted by the venerated fathers of 
New England. 

This will be presented under three sections. 

First, the nature of the church and its priv- 
ileges ; 

Secondly, the nature and powers of the min- 
isterial office ; 

Thirdly, the nature and forms of public wor- 
ship. 



SECTION I . 

THE NATURE OF THE CHURCH AND ITS PRIVILEGES. 

The term "Congregational" appears to have 
been first brought into use by John Cotton. His 
preference for it was grounded on the fact, that 
the word which, in our English version of the 
Bible, is rendered churchy simply and properly 
means a congregation. The word would have 
been rendered " congregation," if King James 
had not required his translators to use the word 
" church" instead. The right sense is given in 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 135 

the nineteenth Article of Religion of the Church 
of England, where the church is defined to be 
" a congregation of faithful men, in which the 
true Word of God is preached, and the sacra- 
ments duly administered according to Christ's 
ordinances, in all those things that of necessity- 
are requisite to the same." So exactly does 
this language express the Puritan sentiments on 
the subject, as to justify the celebrated Earl of 
Shaftesbury, when he said in debate before the 
house of lords, that he " found the nineteenth 
article did define the church directly as the In- 
dependents do." 

In a letter addressed to Rev. Samuel Skelton 
of Salem by Mr. Cotton, three years before he 
left England, there is given the following defini- 
tion of a church : — " It is a flock of saints, called 
by God into the fellowship of Christ, meeting 
together in one place, to call upon the name of 
the Lord, and to edify themselves in communi- 
cating spiritual gifts, and partaking of the ordi- 
nances of the Lord." After his coming to this 
country, Mr. Cotton would have added to the 
above definition, that a mutual covenant, express 
or implied, to unite for the purposes specified, is 
necessary to complete the constitution of a 
church. He subscribed to the Cambridge Plat- 
form, which teaches, that in the larger and more 



136 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

general sense, " the Catholic church is the whole 
company of those that are elected, redeemed, 
and in time effectually called from sin and death 
unto a state of grace and salvation by Jesus 
Christ.'"^ In the common and more special 
sense, the true visible church is " a company of 
saints by calling, united into one body, by a holy 
covenant, for the public worship of God, and the 
mutual edification one of another, in the fellow- 
ship of the Lord Jesus." t 

The national churches imagine that all the 
christian people residing in any country form 
such a congregation. But our fathers held, that 
the term denotes a literal congregation, meeting 
statedly in one place for divine worship and 
ordinances, and united for that purpose into one 
body by a holy covenant. They could find no 
trace of any hierarchy in the New Testament. 
All the acts of church government, and discipline 
mentioned in that book, were administered by 
individual churches. They saw, that, in the 
apostles' time, no one church claimed any right 
to rule over another. They saw, that each 
church, great or small, had as full power to 
manage its own affairs, as though it had been 
the only church in existence. They saw, that 

♦ Chap. II. sec. 1. f lb. aec. 5. 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 137 

each individual church was a complete body of 
itself, endowed with all the organs of indepen- 
dent vitality, and enabled to do whatever may 
be needful for its own preservation, well-being, 
and enlargement. 

There is something noble and liberal in this 
idea, which presents all Christian congregations 
as so many free, spiritual communities ; not 
governed by others, but each governing itself by 
he rules and requirements of God's Word. It 
was only by a long series of usurpations and 
gradual encroachments, that the churches lost 
this original and free constitution, and became 
massed together under the ghostly tyranny of 
lordly hierarchs. 

Our fathers restored in New England the 
primitive apostolical order by which each several 
congregation, or church in the ordinary New 
Testament sense, is divinely empowered to carry 
on a system of self-government in strict observ- 
ance of the rules of the gospel, as to election 
of officers, admission and discipline of members, 
and general management of its own ecclesias- 
tical affairs. Each church, duly constituted, 
with its own officers, was entitled to act for itself 
in all such matters, free from the control of any 
man, or body of men, external to itself In the 
New Testament, our fathers could find no war- 
12# 



138 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

rant for synodical, or diocesan, or provincial, or 
national, or parliamentary churches ; or for 
churches organized by civil authority. They 
found the apostles planting no churches, but 
such as were parochial : that is to say, distinct 
congregations, composed of persons possessing 
the faith, usually meeting in one assembly, and 
transacting their own business w^ithout any sub- 
jection to foreign authority. They held, that 
any organized congregation of believers, formed 
and kept up under the influences of the Holy 
Spirit, and the regulations of the written Word 
of God, is an evangelical church. The view 
which our fathers took of such a church was 
this ; — It is an absolute monarchy democratically 
administered. It is an absolute monarchy : for 
Christ is its supreme Head and King ; his will is 
law ; he alone has the right to legislate ; and his 
decrees recorded in the Bible must alone be obey- 
ed. And the affairs of this spiritual monarchy are 
democratically administered : for to the church 
is given the free election of all executive officers, 
and the members are all possessed of equal 
rights and privileges. What noble schools of 
liberty and independence of soul, willingly obe- 
dient to Christ, but free from vassalage to man, 
must be found in these self-governing societies ! 
There is a passage in a letter from Mr. Cotton 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 139 

to the Lord viscount Say and Seal, which has 
been supposed to militate against these views. 
It is in tlie following words ; — " Democracy I do 
not conceive that ever God did ordain as a fit 
government, either for church or commonwealth. 
If the people be governors, who shall be govern- 
ed ? As for monarchy and aristocracy, they are 
both of them clearly approved and directed in 
Scripture, yet so as referreth the sovereignty to 
himself, [i. e. to God,] and setteth up Theocracy 
in both, as the best form of government in the 
commonwealth as well as in the church.'"^ At 
the first view, this passage seems to be in violent 
opposition to Mr. Cotton's advocacy of popular 
institutions on all other occasions. Some, who 
are friendly to his memory, know not what to 
make of it; and others regard it as a lure to 
tempt certain Puritan peers and other great men 
to come over and join the colonies, as many of 
them were then thinking to do. 

The matter is easily set right by considering 
the meaning of the words "democracy" and "aris- 
tocracy," as used in this letter. The aristocracy 
spoken of here is elective, and for the most part 
temporary. Every representative government is 
an aristocracy, elected by the people to make and 



* See the leller in HuLchinson'3 History of Massachusetts, vol. I., 
p. 437, &;c. 



140 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

administer the laws, for longer or shorter peri- 
ods. A simple democracy, according to the 
primary sense of the word, and the definitions 
of the ablest political writers, is a state of things 
in which the whole collected people make and 
execute the laws. This is mere mob-law, which 
is no government at all, having neither settled 
constitution nor executive officers. It is in this 
sense, that John Cotton denounces democracy ; 
as every reasonable man must do. But the word 
in our day is taken in a much better sense than 
formerly, and is used to designate that republi- 
can form of government in which the people act 
through regularly constituted officers of their 
own choosing. That this was Mr. Cotton's 
meaning is plain from another passage in the 
same letter, toward the close, which is quoted 
for the sake of making him, as he has a right to 
be, his own interpreter. " Bodine confesseth, 
that, though it be status popularis where the 
people choose their own governors, yet the gov- 
ernment is not a democracy, if it be administered, 
not by the people, but by the governors, whether 
one, (for then it is a monarchy, though elective,) 
or by many, for then, as you know, it is aristoc- 
racy. In which respect it is, that church gov- 
ernment is justly denied, even by Mr. Robinson, 
to be democratical, though the people choose 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 141 

their own officers and rulers."^^ We find the 
same idea expressed by Mr. Stone of Hartford, 
when asked to describe the Congregational gov- 
ernment. He replied in his scholastic way ; — 
"It is a speaking Aristocracy in the face of a 
silent Democracy." The church is taught and 
ruled by officers, who are freely chosen by the 
people to act in their offices as the Bible directs. 
This arrangement secures, at once, the order and 
the liberty of the churches. 

Because churches are thus emancipated from 
all foreign jurisdiction, it must not be supposed, 
that they are isolated, disconnected bodies, hav- 
ing no mutual relations of love and duty. No : 
they are a sisterhood : and though all the sisters 
stand on terms of equality and liberty, they are 
both necessarily and willingly bound in family 
ties, the strongest and sweetest of any. As the 
liberty of the individual Christian is not inconsist- 
ent with " the communion of saints," so neither 
is the liberty of particular congregations incon- 
sistent with the communion of churches. Dr. 
Heylin, though a bitter hater of the Puritans, 
has very happily described John Robinson's 
"model of church government" as " consisting of 
a coordination of several churches for their mu- 



# Hutchinson's Hist. I., 439. 



142 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

tual comfort ; not a subordination of the one to 
the other, in the way of direction or command. 
Hence," he adds, " came the name of ' Independ- 
ents,' continued unto those amongst us who 
neither associate themselves with the Presbyte- 
rians, nor embrace the frenzies of the Anabap- 
tists." It is mostly by this name of " Independ- 
ents " that the Congregationalists, who are now 
so numerous in England, are generally known 
in that country. That name, however, was not 
wholly satisfactory to Mr. Cotton. He remarks 
upon it as follows: — " Nor is ' Independency' a fit 
name for the way of our churches : for in some 
respects it is too strait, and in others too large. 
It is too strait, in that it confineth us within our- 
selves, and holdeth us forth as independent of 
all others : whereas indeed we do profess depend- 
ence upon magistrates for civil government and 
protection, dependence upon Christ and his 
Word for the sovereign government and rule of 
our administrations, dependence upon the coun- 
sel of other churches and synods when our own 
variance or ignorance may stand in need of such 
help from them ; and therefore this title of 
' Independency ' straiteneth us and restraineth 
us from our necessary duty and due liberty. 
Again, in other respects, * Independency ' stretch- 
eth itself too largely and more generally than 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 143 

that it can single out us, for it is compatible to a 
national church as well as to a congregational. 
— Wherefore, if there must needs be some note 
of difference to decypher our estate and to dis- 
tinguish our way, I know of none fitter than 
to denominate ours — ' Congregational.' " "^ The 
name ' Independent ' is expressly disapproved 
by the Cambridge Platform.! 

Some of the more rigid Separatists, known by 
the uncouth title of Brownists, carried the idea 
of independency to such an extreme as to render 
every church an isolated body, dwelling soli- 
tarily, without a sisterhood, and the cheering 
interchange of acts of communion. They were 
hurried to this extremity, by the excessive 
anxiety to avoid any entanglement which might 
again ensnare them in the meshes of ecclesias- 
tical bondage. Mr. Cotton and his coadjutors 
happily avoided a sentiment so destructive of all 
the benefits of the fellowship of the churches. 
In replying to Baillie, Mr. Cotton takes occasion 
to say of Brown ; — " Neither in whole nor in 
part do we partake in his schism ; he separated 
from churches and from saints ; we, only from 
the world, and from that which is of the world." 
— " Though we put not such honor upon those 



* Way of Congregational Churches Cleared, p. 11. 
t Chap. II. Sect. 5. 



144 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

he calls ' Brownists,' as to own them for our 
' fathers,' yet neither do we put so much dis- 
honor upon them as to ' heap coals of con- 
tumely ' upon their heads : we look not on 
them with contempt, but compassion."^ Mr. 
Cotton concurred in sentiment with the excellent 
John Robinson, who, in his parting instructions 
to that part of his flock which was about to 
proceed from Leyden to the Plymouth rock, 
recommended them to use " all means to avoid 
and shake off the name of Brownist, being a 
mere nickname, and brand, to make religion 
odious, and the professors of it, to the Christian 
world."! Our fathers held indeed, that every 
congregation is completely independent of all 
others as to jurisdiction and authoritative con- 
trol ; but not as to other forms of connection 
arising from common interests and reciprocal 
aflfections. They carefully cherished an inter- 
course of mutual respect, and confidence, and 
love, an interchange of counsels, and aids, and 
fraternal offices ; which they styled " the com- 
munion of churches." The judicious and mod- 
erate opinions of our fathers are well expressed 
by Thomas Shcpard : — " We utterly dislike 
such Independency as that which is maintained 



* Way of Congregational Churches Cleared, p. 9, 10. 
Young's Clironicles, p. 397. 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 145 

by contempt, or careless neglect, of sister 
churches. We utterly dislike such dependency 
of churches upon others, as is built upon usur- 
pations and spoils of particular churches.'"^ 

The Puritans loved church unity ; — not a 
mere nominal and formal union, where there is 
neither life nor similarity; a union well com- 
pared by Leighton to that of sticks and stones 
when frozen together ; a union consisting in a 
bare outward uniformity, under which is con- 
cealed the bitterest scorn and hate. They 
prized " the unity of the faith," and sought to 
keep " the unity of the Spirit in the bond of 
peace:" and this was nearly all they deemed 
important. 

Great efforts have been made to effect a uni- 
formity of government and worship, which 
should bring all Christendom into one ecclesias- 
tical establishment, with unvarying modes and 
forms. There are men whose notion of the 
church is like a system of gas-pipes in a great 
city, branching in all directions, yet meeting at 
last in one main trunk, which is regarded with 
senseless awe, and mystic veneration as " the 
great centre of visible unity." Very different 
is the Gospel view, which shows every par- 



* Treaiiae of Liturgies, &c., p. 114. 1653. 
VOL. I. 13 



146 LIFE OF JOHN COT-TON. 

ticular church to be built directly on Christ as 
the foundation, and to be no otherwise connected 
with other churches, except as through him 
who is as the common foundation of them all. 
So too each believer, by himself, is a branch of 
the true vine, deriving life and nourishment, 
not mediately through ramified boughs of de- 
pendence and long limbs of distant succession ; 
but immediately from Christ himself, in whom 
all the branches grow, who is the only vital 
bond of union between them. All real Christian 
union circulates through him from church to 
church, and from heart to heart. This hallowed 
bond is not an indefinitely extended chain of 
which only the head-link fastens directly upon 
the mediatorial throne. Every believer is him- 
self in Christ. The disciples are one in him, 
and only in him. To all of them his Spirit is 
imparted directly from himself; and this unites 
them by pervading them all. 

A Catholic Christian union already exists, so 
far as the different denominations rest upon the 
true foundation. An old divine has said, " I 
have seen a field here, and another there, stand 
thick with corn. An hedge or two has parted 
them. At the proper season, the reapers en- 
tered. Soon the earth was disburthened, and 
the grain was conveyed to the destined place ; 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 147 

where, blended together in the barn, or in the 
stack, it could not be known that a hedge once 
separated this corn frona that. Thus it is with 
the church. Here it grows, as it were, in dif- 
ferent fields, severed, it may be, by various 
hedges. By and by, when the harvest is come, 
all God's wheat shall be gathered into the gar- 
ner, without one single mark to distinguish that 
once they differed in the outward circumstan- 
tials of modes and forms." 

The " high-church" temper does not accord 
with the genius of Congregationalism. We 
are not of those who are never sure that they 
are actually in the temple, until they find 'them- 
selves perched upon its topmost pinnacle. Such 
as these, Dean Kennet speaks of, as having lost 
their Christianity in the name of the church. 
Luther describes them as " attributing more 
power to the church which is begotten and 
born, than to the Word which hath begotten, 
conceived, and borne the church." Of such 
men, John Cotton used to say, " They are all 
church, and no Christ." 



148 LIFE or JOHN COTTON. 

SECTION II. 

NATURE AND POWERS OF THE MINISTERIAL OFFICE. 

The fathers of New England held that the 
officers of the church are of two sorts. One of 
these is variously spoken of as pastors, teach- 
ers, elders, presbyters, bishops, overseers, and 
other names indicative of the nature of their 
calling-, and its duties. These all stand upon 
an equality as regards rank and authority. 
There is no difference among them, except 
such as make any man to differ from his politi- 
cal equals, arising from diversity of talents, 
attainments, or moral worth. Hence the office 
holds out no temptation to those ambitious 
aspirants, whose whole desire is to reach some 
station superior to that of their fellows. There 
is BO contending which shall be greatest in the 
kingdom of heaven, so long as there is no such 
condition acknowledged there. Each looks his 
brother in the eye, without receiving from him 
the glance of arrogance, or casting upon him 
that of uneasy inferiority. The primitive paro- 
chial bishops of the old " standing order " in 
Massachusetts, look with pity on those dissent- 
ing presbyters, who sink the dignity of their 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 149 

office, by giving place to spiritual superiors 
whom the Chief Shepherd never set over them. 
The Scripture view of the ministerial office is 
thus briefly summed up by the venerable John 
Cotton : " The bishops Paul speaketh of in 
Timothy, of whose qualification he giveth direc- 
tion, (1 Tim. 2 : 2—7,) he calleth them all, 
when he cometh to give order for their mainte- 
nance, by the name of elders. And in his 
epistle to Titus, the elders which Paul left Titus 
to ordain in every city, he calleth them bishops. 
Tit. 1 : 5 — 7. Now of these he appointeth many 
in one city or church ; not many cities or 
churches under one bishop, Acts 14 : 23 ; elders 
in every city. Acts 20 : 17, 28 ; many elders 
or bishops in the church of Ephesus, Phil. 1:1; 
many bishops as well as many deacons in one 
church of Philippi, and that a poor one too ; for 
Philippi was a church in Macedonia, Acts 16 : 
12 ; and all the churches in Macedonia had 
trial of deep poverty, 2 Cor. 8 : 12." ^ 

The deacons form the only other class of 
church-officers to be seen in the light of the 
New Testament. Their appropriate duty is, to 
attend to the secular afllairs of the church ; but 
being usually more eminent for active piety, 



* Way of the Churches of New England, &c., p. 48. 

13=^ 



150 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

they are chiefly looked to for advice, and ex- 
pected to prepare the business which may come 
before the church. It is singular that, in most 
religious denominations, this office is either dis- 
continued, or its nature and duties are entirely 
changed. In the hierarchal churches, the dea- 
cons are transferred from the charge of tempo- 
ralities to that of spiritualities. They have 
ceased to " serve tables," and profess to " give 
themselves to the AVord of God and to prayer." 
In a word, they claim to be clergymen. More- 
over, they are never inducted into their office 
with any expectation of retaining it for life. It 
is not sought or conferred for its own sake ; but 
merely as one condition of being admitted to a 
higher order in the priesthood. It is difficult to 
conceive of a greater departure from its original 
design, than this divinely appointed office has 
undergone. In the Congregational churches it 
is retained, and fulfills its original purposes. 

We hear much in our times about the neces- 
sity of an " apostolical succession " in the gos- 
pel ministry. And truly such a succession is 
needful, not in form, but in fact ; not in show, 
but in spirit. Wherever you see a " son of 
consolation," one " who is a good man, and full 
of the Holy Ghost and of faith," there you see a 
true successor of the apostles, so far as they can 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 151 

have successors on earth. It is no matter 
through what external source he may have 
derived his license or authority to preach the 
gospel and administer its offices ; if the spirit 
that was in the apostles be in him, he is their 
fellow-laborer, and their successor in the work 
they wrought. Though he may have under- 
gone no prelatical manipulations, he is qualified 
to serve at the altar, " by the imposition of a 
holier hand." 

When we see a man called to the ministry by 
the church of God, his mind instinct with the 
grand truths of revelation, " mighty in the 
Scriptures," fervent in spirit, instant in prayer, 
burning with love to Jesus, and to the souls for 
which Jesus bled, laboriously and faithfully dis- 
pensing the bread of life to hearts hungering for 
the heavenly food, where is he who will coldly 
ask to see his commission to preach the gospel, 
to ascertain if it be endorsed by human sanc- 
tions ? When such a ministry is blessed to the 
illumination of the ignorant, to the reformation 
of the profligate, the conversion of the infidel, 
the comfort of the afflicted, the edification of be- 
lievers, and the salvation of hundreds and of 
thousands, who would care to inspect his eccle- 
siastical pedigree ? While such a man " con- 
tinues steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine and 



152 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in 
prayers," who will question the apostles' fellow- 
ship with him, and their approval of his work? 

Look at Bunyan, faring so coarsely in Bed- 
ford jail, and yet with quenchless zeal exercising 
his despised ministry with the broad seal of 
heaven's approbation, — the effusion of the Holy 
Ghost making it effectual for the conversion of 
sinners and the consolation of saints. Then 
look at the lordly diocesan, under whose unhal- 
lowed authority that man of God was incarce- 
rated only for doing his Master's work, — look at 
the " enthronized" prelate, arrayed in canonical 
silks and rubrical lawns, intent on worldly dig- 
nities and possessions, a stranger to the great 
teachings of the gospel, and hostile to its spirit. 
Compare the two men, the tinker and his op- 
pressor. Then, with the Acts of the Apostles 
and their Epistles in your hands, ask which of 
the two men looks the most like their successor. 
Were the fishermen of Galilee, or the tent-maker 
of Tarsus to revisit this world, the scene of their 
toils and sufferings for Christ and his Church, 
in which of these men would they discern the 
clearest proofs of spiritual affinity with them- 
selves ? With which would they most readily 
hold communion in their ministerial offices ? 

When you receive the sacrament with a heart 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 153 

melted in penitence, glowing with love, burning 
with holy desire ; when you enter with your 
whole soul into the communion of saints ; when 
you feed on Jesus by faith, and find that his 
flesh is meat indeed, and his blood drink indeed ; 
when, in that sacred hour, heaven descends into 
your bosom, and all is joy and peace : say, — can 
you doubt the validity of the ordinance, and 
scruple at the official character of the adminis- 
trator ? No : you would say ; — " God is here, 
and it is good for me to be here : for truly my 
fellowship is with the Father and his Son Jesus 
Christ." That man's religion is vain, who 
proudly rejects a ministry which God conde- 
scends to accept, and seal with his presence and 
his blessing. Wherever we find the most of 
the apostolical doctrine and the apostolical spirit, 
there we are sure to find the most genuine suc- 
cession. 

As for this ecclesiastical figment of a direct 
lineal succession from the apostles, we may ar- 
ray against it not only the opinion of our fathers, 
but the testimony of prelates inferior to none in 
learning, and as much interested as any of their 
brethren in sustaining the fiction, if it were pos- 
sible. 

The famous Dr. Hoadley, Bishop of Bangor, 
declared, "As far as we can judge of things, 



154 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

God's providence never yet in fact kept up a 
regular, uninterrupted succession of rightful 
Bishops.'"^ Speaking of that pretended succes- 
sion, he says ; — " Of which the most learned 
must have the least assurance ; and the un- 
learned can have no notion, but through igno- 
rance and credulity."! Dr. Whately, the 
present Archbishop of Dublin, has declared ; — 
" There is not a minister in all Christendom who 
is able to trace up, with any approach to cer- 
tainty, his own spiritual pedigree. "t The pres- 
ent Bishop of Hereford, in a charge to his clergy, 
says, in reference to the certainty of an apostoli- 
cal succession ; — " To spread abroad this notion, 
would be to make ourselves the derision of the 
world.-'"^ 

The " simple faithful," and such as " occupy 
the room of the unlearned," are in a sorry case, 
if they can never take the comfort of Christian 
sacraments in due security, till they can decide 
where erudite prelates disagree. It happens, 
somewhat oddly, that, at least two metropolitans 
of the Anglican Church, Tillotson and Seeker ; 



♦ Preservative against Nonjurors, p. 47, 4th ed. 
t Answer to Ilepresentation by Committee of Convocation, 
p. 89— 91. 
t Whalely's Kingdom of Christ, Esaay II., Sect. 30. 
§ Cited in Hall's Puritans, p. 388. 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 155 

and four of its heads, James the First, William 
the Third, and George the First and the Second, 
had none but Presbyterian baptism, which is 
said by some to be a nullity. " So we have 
Bishops appointed by unbaptized heads of the 
church, and consecrated by prelates excommu- 
nicated at Rome," the corrupt mother of a cast- 
off daughter, who yet claims to inherit all her 
boasted exclusive privileges from that unhappy 
parentage. It is surely impolitic to rest the 
doctrines of the church, as Macaulay has well 
said, "on a historical theory, which, to ninety- 
nine Protestants out of a hundred, would seem 
much more questionable than any of those doc- 
trines. "=^ It is far better to derive our belief 
from the apostolical Scriptures, which are the 
pure fountain-head ; than from any of the 
branches of that " muddy Tiber," the Roman 
succession. 

The Israelites were thought to be in sad 
plight, when, for lack of smiths, they were forced 
to go down to the Philistines, " to sharpen every 
man his share, and his coulter, and his axe, and 
his mattock." It was acutely said by some of 
our old Puritans ; — " Sure, if Christians might 

not have any ministers, unless ordained by the 

I 

* See an able article on " Church and Slate," in the Edinburgh Re- 
view for April, 1839. 



156 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

popish bishops, the case were as pitiful as if 
sheep might have no shepherds, but such as are 
appointed to them by the wolves.'"^ 

Of late years the old superstitious notions of 
ordination seem to be regaining ground. There 
are many who look upon this solemnity as a sort 
of charm, having a magical effect to make a man, 
be he what he may, a true minister of Christ ; 
and investing him with a mysterious character, 
and conferring on his ministrations a spiritual 
efficacy which cannot be secured in any other 
way. The first reformers and the martyrs of 
the reformation had juster sentiments. In the 
book entitled " The Necessary Doctrine and 
Erudition of a Christian Man," which was 
penned by Archbishop Cranmer as a text-book 
for the instruction of the common people, that 
blessed martyr affirms the original identity of 
bishops and presbyters ; and contends that noth- 
ing more than mere election, or appointment, is 
essential to the sacerdotal office, without conse- 
cration, or any other solemnity. From a man- 
uscript in the handwriting of the same worthy ,^ 
penned with a view to further reformation in the 
time of Edward VI., and transcribed by bishop 
Stillingfleet in his Irenicum, occurs the follovv- 



* iVIodegl ami Brotherly Answer to Charles Herle, by Ri. Mather 
and Win. Tlioiiipsou, IGll. 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 157 

• 

ing explicit Statement ; — " Question 12. Wheth- 
er in the New Testament be required any conse- 
cration o( a bishop and priest, or only appointing 
to the office be sufficient ? " " Arisiver. In the 
New Testament to be a bishop or priest needeth 
no consecration, by the Scripture : for election or 
appointing thereto is sufficient." Seeing that 
the consecrating rites of ordination are used, not 
of necessity, but only for decency or solemnity, 
it is of very little importance, comparatively, how 
or by whom they are performed. If the cere- 
monies were omitted, the ordination would be 
less decorous, but not less valid. 

Such evangelically liberal opinions were once 
more common than now, in those who arrogate 
the episcopal function to themselves. In the 
reign of James the First, the bishops of Raphoe 
and Elphin, in Ireland, united as presbyters 
with the Scottish presbyterians in ordination 
services."^ Archbishop Bancroft, though a stern 
persecutor of all non-conformity, and the rest of 
the bishops with him, owned ordination by pres- 
byters to be valid : and, on this account, refused 
to reordain the Scottish presbyters who were 
then to be made bishops of the new dioceses in 
North Britain ; declaring that to doubt it, was to 



* Bogue and Bennett's History, vol- II. p. 41 1. 
VOL. I. 14 



159 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

• 

doubt whether " there were any lawful vocation 
in most of the reformed churches. ""^ Dr. Bur- 
net, bishop of Salisbury, thus expressed himself 
on this subject ; — *' As for the notion of the dis- 
tinct offices of bishop and presbytef, I confess it 
is not so clear to me : and therefore, since I look 
upon the sacramental actions as the highest of 
sacred performances, I cannot but acknowledge 
those who are empowered for them, must be of 
the highest office in the church." t 

Erasmus does not hesitate to say, that, in the 
time of the apostles, " Bishop, Priest, and Pres- 
byter was all the same," I But it were out of 
place here to relate such testimonies, which are 
numerously rehearsed in the books which ex- 
pressly treat of these topics. Let these citations 
suffice to show, that our fathers were not sin- 
gular in their opinions, which their strenuous 
adversaries had not always the hardihood to 
controvert. Even what has been called " lay 
ordination," in cases of emergency is not with- 
out the sanction of divines of the highest con- 
sideration, both in ancient and modern times. 
Thus Luther says ; — " If any pious laymen 
were banished to a desert, and having no regu- 



* Archb Spolteswood's Hisl. p. 514. 

t Vindication of the Church of Scotland, p. 310. 

I Opera, Tom. V. Col. 652. Ed. Lugd. 1701. 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 159 

larly constituted priest among them, were to 
asrree to choose for that office one of their num- 
ber, married or unmarried, this man would be 
as truly a priest as if he had been consecrated 
by all the bishops in the world. Augustine, 
Ambrose, and Cyprian were chosen in this 
manner.'"^ Even Hooker, the boasted cham- 
pion of prelatic power, was "judicious " enough 
in the third book of his Ecclesiastical Polity, to 
acknowledge boldly, that such ordinations have 
been often justifiable. " There may be," he 
says, " sometimes very just and sufficient reason 
to allow ordination made without a bishop. 
Where the Church must needs have some 
ordained, and neither hath nor can have possibly 
a bishop to ordain, in case of such necessity the 
ordinary institution of God hath given often- 
times, and may give place." 

Our fathers held that the power of calling 
suitable persons to office, belongs to the church ; 
and there too inheres the power of displacing 
such incumbents as prove to be incapable or 
unworthy. It is a maxim of law, that the right 
of divesting for good cause, goes with the right 
of investing.! The privilege of calling to office 



* Appeal to the German emperor and nobles, given in D'Aubigne's 
Hist, of Reformation. II. 84. 
t Cujus est instituere, ejusdem est destituere. 



160 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

the first churches exercised in the very presence 
of the apostles. And it was many ag^es before 
this privilege was entirely wrested out of their 
hands by the hierarchal usurpers, who strove to 
exalt the clergy at the expense of the people, 
and acted on the principle that the church was 
made for the minister, and not the minister for 
the church. Though all the ministers were to 
perish in a night, the Church would still survive 
in the baptized fraternity ; and this brotherhood 
would be authorized to establish the ministry 
anew. It is from the Church that the ministry 
must come. They must be church members 
before they can become church ministers ; and 
the very name of minister^ or servant, implies 
the previous existence, and the appointing 
power, of the body to be served. 

The opinion of our fathers is thus expressed 
by Cotton Mather ; — " Ordination they looked 
upon but as a ceremony, whereby a called min- 
ister was declared by imposition of hands, to be 
solemnly set apart for his ministry ; and in the 
same rite, the assistances, and protections, and 
manifold blessings of the Holy Ghost in the 
exercises of his ministry, were solemnly im- 
plored for him. Briefly, they reckoned not 
ordination to be essential unto the vocation of a 
minister, any more than coronation to the being 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 161 

of a king ; but that it is only a consequent and 
convenient adjunct of his vocation, and a solemn 
acknowledgment of it, with an useful and proper 
benediction of him in it."^ 

Properly the church elects her own officers ; 
and ordination is but solemnly and formally 
setting apart to his duties the person so chosen. 
It is no charm, and exerts no magic power. It 
is merely opening to suitable persons that door 
of office which should stand closed to the un- 
suitable. As the church has the sole right of 
calling to office, this greater right involves the 
lesser right of directing how the ordination 
should be conducted, due regard being had to 
the requirements of the Bible. But though 
officers derive their calling from the voice of the 
church ; yet the powers and privileges of office, 
after they are called and inducted, they derive 
from the appointment of Christ, who has deter- 
mined in his law what they shall be. Thus it 
is in our civil commonwealth, which is modeled 
very much upon the Scriptural plan of church 
polity. The executive officers of the State ob- 
tain their offices by the choice of the people ; 
but being once chosen, their duties and preroga- 
tives are not prescribed by the popular will, but 



* Magnalia Book V. Ch. XVII. Sect. 5. 

14# 



162 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

by the written constitution of government. So 
the church appoints her ministers ; but Christ 
appoints their duties and privileges in the Bi- 
ble, the sacred statute-book of his kingdom. 
" The law and the testimony,'' describes the 
nature of these offices ; the Church only sup- 
plies incumbents to occupy them. They who 
hold them are to follow only the regulations 
which their Lord has enacted. The Church 
may exclude from her ministry, and her mem- 
bership such as prove themselves unworthy ; for 
to this end the keys of the kingdom are com- 
mitted to her with the tremendous power of 
binding on earth what shall also be confirmed 
in heaven. But if she attempt to exercise this 
" power of the keys " contrary to the decrees of 
inspiration, nothing is effected; for in so doing 
she changes the key, and an erroneous key 
bindeth not."^ The Church can do nothing but 
what Christ has authorized to be done. The 
power committed to the Church is not legisla- 
tive, but administrative. Her power is ministe- 
rial, or stewardly ; and it is for this purpose, 
that " the keys " are hung at her girdle. Christ 
put a stop to law-making, when he made an 
end of the canon of inspiration. The matter is 



* Clavia errans aon ligat 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 163 

forcibly expressed by Mr. Cotton, of whom a 
very powerful opponent remarked ; — " I had a 
particular unwillingness to enter the lists of 
strife with that reverend, famous, most able, 
and tight writer." Mr. Cotton was speaking of 
that clause in the apostolic commission ; — 
" Teaching them to observe all things whatso- 
ever I have commanded you." His words are : 
" If the apostles teach people to observe more 
than Christ has commanded, they go heyond 
their commission; and a larger commission 
than that given to the apostles, neither Elders, 
nor Synods, nor Churches can challenge." 

This matter- is discussed by him with great 
clearness and " evidence of Scripture light " in 
his book, entitled " The Keys of the Kingdom 
of Heaven." This is, at the present day, the 
most important of his published writings. He 
here claims somewhat more of authority for the 
elders of the Church, than has usually been 
conceded among Congregationalists ; and par- 
ticularly he ascribes to the elders the veto 
power, so that they may have a negative upon 
the acts of the brotherhood ; but no right, in any 
thing which concerns the latter to impose 
aught upon them without their consent. With 
this one exception as to the veto, the senti- 
ments of this book accord with what has been 



164 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

generally professed by our churches, and it is 
marked by careful discrimination and logical 
precision. 

Their great business of proclaiming the gos- 
pel, clothes the ministers with an influence so 
commanding, while rightly directed, that they 
need wish for no higher authority. To " labor 
in the word and doctrine," is to rule pre- 
eminently well, and gives the teaching elder 
who does it a special title to " be counted 
worthy of double honor." " Preaching is a 
principal part of governing, and Christ himself 
ruleth his Church by his Word." 

It is something admirable that our forefathers 
should stamp such an independent character 
upon each particular church and its ministry. 
In so doing they rose above all the prejudices of 
education, and surmounted the whole force of 
public opinion in their times. Though born in 
an age of hierarchies, and bred under one 
themselves, they made no attempt to imitate 
the system here. What was there to hinder 
them from constituting a new hierarchy here 
wqth the potent John Cotion at its head ? What 
was there to prevent them from endowing their 
churches with vast territorial possessions en- 
tailed upon them forever ? They did nothing of 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 165 

the kind ; thoug-h they had purchased to them- 
selves a right to do so if they chose, by banish- 
ing themselves to the wilderness for the express 
purpose of doing as they chose. But no man 
would have resisted more strenuously than Mr. 
Cotton himself, the attempt to confer upon him 
the least official supremacy above his brethren. 
We find him refusing to be supported in any 
other way, than by voluntary contribution, the 
free-will offerings of his people.^ 

Following the Scripture rules and precedents, 
our fathers declared for the equality of all 
churches, the equality of all church members, 
and the equality of all church ministers. That 
" liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free," 
could have no stronger safeguards. 



SECTION III. 

NATURE AND FORMS OF PUBLIC W^ORSHIP. 

The principal part of this duty is prayer, with 
its proper adjuncts of praise and confession. 
Our fathers held, that " true prayer is the work 
of God's Spirit in our hearts, teaching and ena- 



# Winthrop's Hist. I. p. 12L 



166 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

bling^ us to pour out our souls unto God in all 
necessities and occasions." On this account, 
they held that prayer should be free; not 
restricted to set forms and prescribed liturgies, to 
be used compulsorily at all times of devotion. 
They found neither Christ nor his apostles 
requiring any invariable forms of prayer. From 
this John Cotton argued, that there is "no expe- 
diency thereof to the edification of the church ; 
unless it might be presumed, that there is some 
help, or means, of God's worship expedient to 
the edification of the Church, which never came 
into the heajt of Christ and of his apostles to 
commend unto the Church." * To exact the 
constant use of a " stinted liturgy " when Christ 
exacted it not, our fathers regarded as a direct 
usurpation of Christ's kingly office, by imposing 
conditions of membership and ministry in his 
Church which he never decreed. 

Such a liturgy, they said, was the lethargy of 
worship. It is not to be wondered at, that they 
sometimes spoke harshly of it, when stung to 
desperation by tyrannous and cruel attempts to 
force them, under the severest penalties, to read 
or hear it. " Oppression maketh a wise man 
mad." 



♦ A Modest and Clear Answer, &c.. ch. 1. 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 167 

The Puritan divines could find no trace of 
such liturgies for the first three centuries of the 
Christian era. They found that the compilation 
of them owed its origin to the wretched ignorance 
of many of the clergy, who, being incapable of 
properly discharging this duty, had forms of 
prayer drawn up for their use. Such forms, the 
Puritans regarded as crutches for the Jame ; and 
were willing that the lame should use them. 
But they knew no reason why these instruments, 
however handsomely turned or richly adorned, 
should be forced upon such as were not lame 
enough to need them. Thus in a speech made 
in 1641, in the house of peers, by Lord Viscount 
Say and Seal, that noble Puritan says ;— " This 
injunction of such forms upon all men turns that 
which, in the beginning, necessity brought in for 
the help of insufficiency, to be now the continu- 
ance and maintenance of insufficiency, and a 
bar to the exercise of able and sufficient gifts and 
graces ; as if, because some men had need to 
make use of crutches, all men should be prohib- 
ited the use of their legs, and enjoined to take 
up such crutches as have been prepared for those 
who had no logs ! " 

The service-book having been mostly transla- 
ted from the Latin missal used by the Romish 
priests, was the occasion of much stumblino- at it 



168 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

by the Puritans. Even King James once 
described it as "an ill-said mass in English." 
The reason given by the compilers of the com- 
mon-prayer for retaining so much of the Romish 
book, was a wish to conciliate the Papists, as 
much as possible, to the Protestant w^orship. 
And even Bishop Stillingfleet could once argue, 
that what \yas merely " laid as a bait " for the 
Papists, could never have been intended " as an 
hook for those of our own profession." But a 
hook they found it ! and so keenly barbed, that 
it was not without much laceration that they 
disengaged it from their bleeding mouths. 

They could never be reconciled to that which 
became the instrument of so much civil and relig- 
ious despotism. They could never succumb to 
the pretensions of any set of men to dictate to all 
other men, even in distant regions and future 
centuries, with what petitions they should ap- 
proach the throne of grace, and in what terms 
they shall address their Heavenly Father. To 
prescribe a form, they said, was stopping the 
course of God's Spirit, and muzzling the mouth 
of prayer. What can be more contrary to the 
free and fetterless spirit of New Testament wor- 
ship, than thus to confine it to sluggish canals, 
with formal locks for reaching a measured ele- 
vation ; instead of permitting it to flow in its 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 169 

natural channels as marked out by the finger of 
Providence, and filled by the Spirit of God ? As 
well might we attempt to give an artificial out- 
line to the flames upon the altar, and seek to fix 
them in one unvarying shape. 

The inconveniences of being lied up to such a 
ritual were curiously illustrated during the 
struggle between James II. and the Prince of 
Orange. Though the body of the clergy favored 
the side of William and Mary, they were obli- 
ged to follow the liturgy, which the Archbishop, 
engrossed as he was by political duties, had not 
time to alter. The poor ministers had to keep 
on praying for their most dread and sovereign 
liege-lord. King James, that " God would con- 
found the devices of his enemies." This was 
hard, both on them and the public : on them, as 
being forced to pray against their own wishes ; 
and on the public, because the nation would have 
been ruined, if their prayers had been accepted.=^ 
During the American Revolution, it came to pass, 
that nearly every Episcopal meeting-house in the 
colonies was closed. Their ministers, inclined 
as they were to principles of monarchy, both in 
Church and State, could not vary from the pre- 
scribed forms of prayer : and the people, filled 



* Life and Times of Dr Edmund Calamy. L 20L 
VOL. I. 15 



170 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

with the spirit of liberty, could not endure the 
petitions for king George, which those unaltera- 
ble forms required. 

No one form of prayer can be ample enough to 
express all the wants of the Church. It was well 
said by one good man ; — " If I had a prayer-book 
which contained all my wants, it would be so 
large, that I should be obliged to carry it about 
on a wheel-barrow ! " 

In other parts of worship, such as singing the 
praises of God, and the preaching of his Word, 
our fathers had little that was peculiar to them- 
selves. The sacraments of baptism and the 
Lord's Supper, they regarded as signs or 
emblems of the highest spiritual truths. In 
administering the sacraments, they used a plain- 
ness and simplicity, agreeable to the Scriptural 
patterns, and such as showed that they were but 
signs. A pompous and imposing ceremonial 
tends to confine the mind of the worshiper to 
the sacrament, as if it might have some virtue or 
saving efficacy in itself. But the more simple 
celebration constrains the worshiper to feel that 
these sacred things, after all, are only signs; 
and thus the soul is led to look through them, 
and beyond them to that which is signified. Such 
observance is the most spiritual, and is best 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 171 

adapted to secure the great ends of the sacra- 
ments of grace and life. 

Thus have we briefly surveyed the outlines of 
that godly discipline, which our fathers model- 
ed after the pattern in the mount. The lapse 
of two centuries has suggested no material 
improvement, no closer approach to the primitive 
and apostolical plan. This building of God 
goes bravely on. Founded on the Rock of 
Ages, it lifts apace its rising walls, and heightens 
all its towers, standing in massive and enduring 
strength. 

And when the millennial sun shall rise in 
cloudless glory, the fair fabric shall front the 
rejoicing East. Its gold, and silver, and precious 
stones shall reflect in mild radiance the intenscr 
blaze of the ascending orb. Each stately pillar 
and graceful arch shall glow with the living 
light of heaven. From its open gates of lucid 
pearl shall burst the choral songs, which tell 
that God, — God in the fullness of his bliss,— -is 
there. 



172 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON 



CHAPTER VII. 

The merits of Congregationalism. Paul's defence of himself against 
the charsre of heresy. Application of it to the Puritans. Restora- 
tion of Christ's kingship in the Church. John Cook quoted. Re- 
capitulation. Subject divided. I. Antiquity of the Congregational 
way. Study of antiquity. Excessive deference paid to the old 
Eccleaiastical writers. Uncertainty of Pairistical traditions, illus- 
trated by more recent instances. Remnants of the earliest fathers 
characterized. Retort of Irish convert. King Jamie's maxim. 
Luther's estimate of the " fathers." Lord Bacon's estimate. 
King James again. The sacred writers the best church antiquari- 
ans. John Wilkes' retort. Luther's retort. John Cotton's opin- 
ion. His opinion sanctioned by candid Romanists. What if we 
had lived in the third century ? Connecticut ministers. II. Cath- 
olicism. What it is. S. Mather. Dr. Owen. J. Cotton. Prot- 
estation of Puritans. Two divines. Open communion, the 
Congregational practice. I. Mather. Cambridge Platform. J. 
Cotton. Gov. Winslow. John Higginson. Jonathan Mitchell. 
Massachusetts pastors to John Dnry. Variety in unity preferable 
to mere uniformity. III. Spirituality. Congregationalism conge- 
nial to the "free spirit" of the gospel. Spirit and forms. Milton; 
Barrowe. Conder. Practical tendencies of Congregationalism. 
Promotes liberality. Cherishes public spirit. Favorable to liber- 
ty. Excites free inquiry. John Robinson. John Norton. J. 
Winslow. J. Cotton. Relation of Church and State. " The wis- 
est of the best." Failures and successes of the Puritans. 

The apostle Paul was once pleading in his own 
defence before Felix. It was a critical hour, and 
his life hung- upon the event. The Jewish 
priests, by their hired advocate, TertuUus, had 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 173 

charged the Apostle as being a mover of sedition 
against the imperial authority, and as being a 
ringleader, or literally a front-rank man, of the 
sect of the Nazarenes. On these grounds, they 
demanded that he should be adjudged to death. 

The Apostle, in his reply, first disposed of the 
unfounded charge of sedition. He then pro- 
ceeded to discuss the accusation, that he was a 
prominent leader among the Nazarenes, which 
was one of the earliest names by which the fol- 
lowers of Jesus were known. " But this I con- 
fess unto thee, that after the way which they 
call heresy, so worship I the God of my fathers." 
While he thus frankly owns himself to be a 
Nazarene, he makes the acknowledgment in such 
a way as to take off all culpability from the fact. 
For he alledges, that, as a Nazarene, he worships 
none other than the God of his fathers ; and this 
was a privilege which had been secured to the 
Jews by several of the edicts and charters of the 
Roman emperors. He was thus entitled to the 
protection of the law. He not only affirms that 
he was a worshiper of the God of Abraham, but 
that he believed the whole canon of the Jewish 
Scriptures ; and, like the mass of that people, 
had a firm hope of a general resurrection. 

The invidious name of sect or heresy, which 
the high-church party among the Jews applied 
15=^ 



174 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

to the Nazarenes, means strictly a taking up, — 
a taking up with any new-fang-led opinions. 
This charge the Apostle could very sincerely 
deny. For the Holy Ghost had taught him that 
Christianity was nothing else but Judaism 
brought to its full perfection. Judaism was the 
acorn, whose ceremonial shell concealed the fu- 
ture oak. It was the germ which contained all 
the rudiments, as yet undeveloped, of the broad, 
umbrageous tree. The advent of Christ was the 
germination which burst the henceforth useless 
shell ; and started the rapid growth of that tree 
of life, beneath whose wide and sheltering shad- 
ow the gathered nations of the earth should sit. 
In the process of centuries, this monarch of 
the forest had nearly lost its natural growth. It 
was overgrown with strangling vines, and with 
parasites which wasted its vigor, and with nox- 
ious grafts of a nature contrary to its own. The 
refonners of the sixteenth century, set themselves 
to work as God's husbandmen, to clear away 
this cumbrous mass of foreign vegetation. The 
Church of God in England, one chief limb, was 
purged to a great extent : but it remained for our 
Puritan fathers, in the following century, to 
complete the work, and to present at least one 
living branch of the ancient tree restored to its 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 



175 



pristine state, and flourishing in its own natural 
and beauteous growth. 

But to drop this parable, our fathers when they 
went on to perfect their ecclesiastical reform, 
were assailed by all the forces of the hierarchy. 
High priests and lower priests loudly accused 
them before Csesar's tribunals of heresy and sec- 
tarism. To this invidious charge the accused 
could reply with the Apostle :— " But this I con- 
fess unto thee, that after the way which they 
call heresy, so worship I the God of my fathers." 
After the first English reformers had restored 
the prophetical and priestly offices of Christ, our 
forefathers conceived that the kingly office of 
Christ still remained to be restored. They 
sought to reform the government, as well as the 
doctrine, of the Church. They maintained that 
ordinances of man's invention are no more to be 
mixed up with what Christ has instituted as 
King, than man's dogmas are to be blended with 
his teachings as the great Prophet of Israel, or 
than man's works and merits are to be mingled 
with his atonement as the High Priest of our 

profession. 

Their views were well expressed in a tract 
printed in 1647, by John Cook, of Gray's Inn, 
Barrister: from which a few quotations will be 
offered. " The question, truly stated, is but this, 



176 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

Whether the inventions of men ought any more 
to be mixed with the institutions of Christ in his 
Kingly office, than their good works in his 
Priestly office." An Independent " is content to 
be every man's servant, so as Christ may but 
reign over his conscience, which if He should 
not, we know not where he is to reign." " He 
depends not on any but Christ Jesus the Head, 
in point of canon and command, for spiritual 
matters. Concerning the discipline of Christ's 
Church, he does no more depend upon man than 
concerning the doctrine ; and counts it the most 
glorious sight in the world, to see Jesus Christ 
walk as King, ruling by the sceptre of his Word 
in the midst of his golden candlesticks." " He 
will not be beaten but by Scripture weapons : 
and in reading Scriptures, neither stretches 
things wider, nor draws them narrower than 
God has made them." We give one extract 
more. " He judges Christ's Kingdom to be only 
there where His laws are in force ; for that 
county is no part of a prince's dominion which 
is not regulated by his laws."^ 

True to these principles, the " Reformists" 
sought, with scrupulous care, to restore the prim- 



♦ A reprint of this sententious tract may be found in the third vol- 
ume of Hambury's Historical Memorials relating to the Independ- 
ents, &c. 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 177 

itive and apostolical order of church administra- 
tion. 

In the preceding chapter we gave a brief 
sketch of the main features of that church gov- 
ernment which our fathers deduced and adopted 
from the Bible. We showed, that they held each 
local church or covenanted congregation, to have 
entire spiritual jurisdiction within itself, to be 
fully competent to its own government by the 
rules of God's Word, and to be no ways depend- 
ent on other churches, except for reciprocal acts 
of kindness and assistance, as one hand may help 
another. We showed that they considered min- 
isters of the gospel to be all equal in respect to 
official rank; to be elected and called by the 
Church to that great work ; and to labor therein 
according to the instructions of the Bible, and 
not according to the dictates of men. Owning 
Christ as supreme Lord and Master, and all his 
disciples as free and equal subjects of his power, 
they looked upon the visible Church as an abso- 
lute monarchy democratically administered. We 
also exhibited their views of public worship, — 
that it should be simple in its character, and 
chiefly marked by unfettered freedom and high 
spirituality. 

And now we present for consideration the 



178 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

merits of this ancient, catholic and scriptural sys- 
tem of ecclesiastical discipline. 



SECTION I. 

THE ANTIQUITY OF THE CONGREGATIONAL WAY. 

Far be it from us to slight the authority of 
antiquity, provided it be of the highest kind ; 
namely, the oldest of which the case admits. 
Our pilgrim-sires contended, that their order was 
no newer than the New Testament : and that it 
was old enough to be coeval with Christ and his 
apostles, from whom it originated. 

The mind takes a pleasure in coming into 
contact with things remote. It delights to travel 
back into the distant ages of the past, tracing up 
usages to their origin, and standing at the far off 
fountains from whence the streams of custom 
have come rolling down to our times. These 
pilgrimages of the mind amid the vestiges and 
monuments of perished centuries are full of 
pleasure and profit. 

" Nor rough and barren are the winding ways 
Of hoar antiquity, but strewn with flowers." 

But there is no study which requires more 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 179 

plain and practical good sense. Imaginative 
minds become, as it were, spell-bound by the 
venerable aspect of the past; and under its 
wizard-wand, lose the power of discriminating 
between veritable truth and monastic fabling, 
between actual occurrences and legendary lore. 
It requires great soundness of judgment to trav- 
erse the dim vista of ages almost unstoried, 
where the solemn shapes loom up with awful 
port, " and frowning in the uncertain dawn of 
time," subdue the soul with a superstitious rever- 
ence. To reduce these shadowy forms to their 
real dimensions requires a keen-eyed caution and 
strong-minded solidity, which have not been the 
endowments of every enthusiastic scholar. One 
of the most laborious and sensible of England's 
older antiquarians has said ; — " Abating only 
Holy Writ, it is as impossible to find antiquity 
without fable, as an old face without wrinkles." 
As to the fathers of the church, as they are 
called, or the ancient ecclesiastical writers, it is 
not easy to see any good ground for the defer- 
ence which has been paid to their authority in 
theological questions. Especially when we con- 
sider how easy it is on any such question to 
quote fathers against fathers, and councils against 
councils, it is strange to observe the respect 
which has been paid to the contradictory respon- 



180 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

ses of these ambiguous oracles. Neither the 
Church nor any of its members in those earlier 
times had any promises of supernatural aid and 
guidance, more than the Church and its members 
may have now. Nor had they any more right 
to decree for our observance, articles which 
Christ never sanctioned, than we have to do such 
a thing for them that shall live a thousand years 
hence. 

It is said, that the Greek and Latin fathers are 
valuable witnesses as to the belief and practice 
of their own times, and so they are. But it is 
not from their times, nor from any times except 
those of the apostles, that we are to take our 
pattern. 

It has been said too, that, as these antiquated 
authors lived nearer to the apostolic age than we, 
they must have preserved a nearer and more 
correct tradition of what the apostles did. But 
let us take a case with which we are familiar. 
It is not two hundred years since the first set- 
tlers of New England were living. They have 
been succeeded by five or six generations of their 
descendants, an educated people, deeply inter- 
ested in the events of that period, and abounding 
in printed books relating to it. Now suppose we 
were to go about among our people, collecting 
all the traditionary information which remains 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 181 

among them, relative to the affairs and practices 
of the first settlers of this soil. Can any one be- 
lieve, that out of the materials so amassed, the 
web of an accurate and veritable history could 
be woven ? It is certain that a narrative drawn 
up from such sources of information must abound 
in gross mistakes and absurd fabrications. 

What reliance, then, can be placed upon tra- 
ditions received by men who lived and wrote 
two hundred years after the apostles : — traditions 
preserved among a people of whom the mass 
was exceedingly ignorant and unintelligent ; and 
of whom the superior part was by no means 
marvelously enlightened. The credibility of 
such traditions, to which the art of printing had 
not rendered its important aid, must ever be 
extremely suspicious. Take a case nearer our 
own day, drawn 

" From that Brabantine field. 
The proudest field of fame." 

The battle of Waterloo was the most eventful 
passage of arms which has been decided for many 
a long century. For historical purposes it is 
important to know at what hour of the day, that 
fearful strife of embattled nations began. And 
yet of all the numerous actors in the scene who 
have attempted to narrate the order of its events, 
VOL. I. 16 



182 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

scarce two agree as touching that one simple 
matter of fact. How vague and unsatisfactory, 
then, must be any uninspired tradition, especially 
if it have been long unwritten ? The reflecting 
mind cannot content itself with such dubious au- 
thority in matters of the highest moment. And 
why should it seek contentment there, when the 
apostles themselves, " moved by the Holy Ghost," 
committed to infallible records all the traditions 
which they wished to hand down to the success- 
ive ages of the church ? '^ 

The writings of the fathers were extravagantly 
over-estimated in their own times, and ever since. 
Read the remains which have come down to us 
from the apostolic age. The largest of these are 
the epistle of Barnabas, the fellow laborer of St. 
Paul ; and the " Shepherd " of Hermas, the 
same, perhaps, to whom St. Paul addressed a 
salutation in the last chapter of his epistle to the 
Romans ; and the epistle of Clement, also sa- 
luted in the same chapter. Whoever expects to 
find in these pieces much of the Pauline stamp 
of thought and diction, will be sadly disappoint- 
ed. The epistle of Barnabas is a tedious and 
tasteless affair, full of poor and senseless con- 
ceits, and absurd allegories. As for the " Shep- 



*2The83. 2: 15, and 3: G. 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 183 

herd" of Hermas, if any one were to read it, 
without knowing but what it might be some 
modern production, he would throw it aside as 
the scribbling of some miserable driveler. The 
epistle of Clement the Roman, addressed to the 
Corinthian Church, is a moderately respectable 
performance ; but, in respect to richness of gos- 
pel truth and evangelic fervor, immeasurably 
inferior to the epistles of St. Paul to the same 
Christian community. In reading these writings 
of men whom the apostles had known and 
taught, we cannot but feel the conviction deep- 
ened, that it was the inspiration of God which 
enabled the apostles to teach in a strain of doc- 
trine and argument at least a whole heaven 
above these their disciples and followers. 

If we learn from these earliest fathers so lit- 
tle, indeed nothing, in addition to what instruc- 
tion the New Testament gives, we may well 
give up the expectation of being made much 
wiser by the study of the vast and voluminous 
remains of the later fathers. When the Romish 
priest objected to the Irish convert to protestant- 
ism, that he was not acquainted with the opin- 
ions of the fathers, it was wisely retorted by the 
latter, that he had done what was milch better ; 
he had prayerfully studied the grandfathers, — 
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. He who has 



184 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

informed himself of the low state of education 
and literature during the centuries which pre- 
ceded the Protestant reformation, will hardly 
persuade himself that the authors of those times 
are fit to be the teachers of the nineteenth cen- 
tury. Their traditions will have no weight 
whatever. Even that royal sophomore, James 
I., had sense enough to say; — "In all usages 
and precedents, let the times be considered 
wherein they first began ; which [times] if they 
be weak or ignorant, it derogateth from the au- 
thority of the usage, and leaveth it for suspect." 
According to this principle, the fathers will be 
but dubious guides. A more thorough and sys- 
tematic view of the doctrines and duties of 
Christianity can be derived from the volumes of 
Dr. Dwight, than from all the ponderous tomes 
of Chrysostom, and the huge lumbering folios of 
Aug-ustine beside. 

It is true that the works of the later fathers, 
who lived when the primitive simplicity was 
lost from sight amid the accumulating inven- 
tions of superstitious or aspiring men, are gener- 
ally favorable to hierarchy and its proud 
pretensions. But the few genuine documents 
which have descended to us from the first three 
centuries, fully substantiate the Congregational- 
ism of the Puritans. And this explains the 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 185 

treatment which the ancient writers have re- 
ceived from the divines of the Anglican Church. 
That treatment led Chillingworth to say, that 
" those divines account the fathers to be fathers 
when they are for them, and children when 
they are against them." Martin Luther, who 
was learned in this sort of lore, was so perplexed 
by the many discrepancies and puerile fancies 
which abound in those old ecclesiastical writers, 
that he cast them aside in despair. He once 
said ; — " When God's Word is by the fathers 
expounded, construed and glossed, then, in my 
judgment, it is even like to one that straineth 
milk through a coal-sack, which must needs 
spoil and make the milk black." In five differ- 
ent places of Lord Bacon's works, he repeats the 
sentiment ; — " Time seemeth to be of the nature 
of a river or flood, that bringeih down to us that 
which is light or blown up, and sinketh and 
drowneth that which is soHd and grave." Were 
it not for his lordship's charity, he might have 
felt some suspicions, that antiquity, after all, has 
sent down to us the best it had. 

The Puritans were too stiff-kneed to succumb 
to the decisions of uninspired men, whether an- 
cient or modern. But they were ready to bring 
their church polity to the test of antiquity, pro- 
vided it should be the oldest antiquity of all. In 
16=^ 



1S6 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

reply to such as imagined that their churches 
dropped out of the clouds some time in the six- 
teenth century, they could adopt the language 
of King James at the Hampton Court Confer- 
ence ; — " I know not how to answer the objec- 
tions of papists, when they charge us with 
novelties, but by telling them, that we retain the 
primitive use of things, and only forsake their 
novel corruptions." 

And truly, if antiquity is to decide the point, 
let us go back of the old writers to the older 
Bible. The Acts of the Apostles is a far purer 
and more ancient record than the most antiqua- 
ted of the church histories ; and the apostolical 
epistles are far safer and more venerable docu- 
ments than the mustiest relics of what school- 
men and churchmen have penned. Why should 
we examine the subject of the Church's consti- 
tution by the feeble tapers of human wisdom, 
when we may bring it at once to the sun-light of 
revelation. If you were suffering from a pain- 
ful disease, and the physician were to offer you 
a vast variety of remedies, of which some would 
help you a little, and others would help you 
more ; and if he were to hold out one which 
would afford instant and permanent relief, would 
you not promptly reject the others, and insist 
upon receiving that which will give immediate 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 187 

health and soundness ? And why should we be 
dallying with the fathers, when the blessed 
Bible SO far exceeds them in every thing in 
which they can be supposed to benefit us ? 
Well has it been said by a living divine ; — 
" The Bible is older than the fathers, — truer 
than traditions, — wiser than councils, — more 
learned than universities, — more orthodox than 
creeds, — more infallible than popes, — more au- 
thoritative than priests, — more powerful than 
ceremonies, — more reliable for the world's sal- 
vation than any thing or every thing else under 
the heavens." 

When the Papist asks the Congregational- 
ist ; — " Where was your church before the Pu- 
ritans set it up ? " we might answer as John 
Wilkes, the celebrated sheriff of Middlesex, did 
in a similar case. He retorted on the Papist ; — 
" Sir, did you wash your face this morning ? " 
The Papist answered, somewhat sullenly, in the 
affirmative. " Well then," rejoined the witty 
sheriff, "where was your face before it was 
washed ? " This question was shrewdly put : 
for let the popish corruptions be thoroughly 
washed off, and the popish pollutions be purged 
away, and the fair face of the Church will re- 
appear in its primeval beauty. Or we may 
answer briefly with Luther to the priest who 



188 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

scornfully asked ; — " Where was your Church 
during so many long centuries ? " To whom 
the bold reformer promptly replied ; — " My 
Church was where yours never was, — in the 
Bible ! " Holding fast this inviolable charter of 
the city of God, we may appeal from men who 
reject us, to God who owns us. We may 
appeal in the language of the prophet; — 
" Doubtless thou art our Father, though Abra- 
ham be ignorant of us, and Israel acknowledge 
us not : thou, Lord, art our Father, our Re- 
deemer ; thy name is from everlasting." 

Nothing can be more sound than John Cot- 
ton's remark ; — " That must be true which was 
primitive ; and that must be primitive which is 
from the beginning. There is no false way," he 
adds, "but what is an aberration from the first 
institution." He followed this principle till it 
led him to say ; — " The way of Independency 
hath been bred in the womb of the New Testa- 
ment of the immortal seed of the Word of truth, 
and received in the times of the purest primitive 
antiquity.""^ He looked upon no other mode of 
ecclesiastical discipline to be " so ancient as the 
way of our Congregational government of each 
church within itself, by the space of three hun- 



♦ Way ofCongregalional Churches, p. 9, 164S. 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 1S9 

dred years. Con^egational discipline was insti- 
tuted by Christ and his apostles. '"^ This opinion 
is sanctioned by some of the best informed histo- 
rians in the communion of the Church of Rome. 
Of this, any one may find sufficient proof in the 
authorities cited by Moshein. To these may be 
added the testimony of the monastic writers 
of church history, known as the Magdeburg 
Centuriators. " But, whoever will look through 
the approved authors of this age, will see that 
the form of government was quite democratical. 
For individual churches had equal power, as to 
purely teaching the Word of God, administering 
th& sacraments, excommunicating heretics and 
offenders, choosing, calling, ordaining, and for 
just reasons deposing again, their ministers, and 
assembling conventions and synods."! DuPin, 
a doctor of the Sorbonne, and a man of rare 
learning and candor, speaking of the first three 
centuries, acknowledges in general that the mode 
of church government was altogether of a popu- 
lar cast ; and then adds ; — "• After all, it must be 
confessed, that the discipline of the church has 
been so extremely different, and so often altered, 
that it is almost impossible to say any thing pos- 



* Way of Congregational Churches, pp. 93,94. Also Prop. I., in 
survey of Church Discipline. 

t II Cent. Chapter 7. Title, De Consociatione Ecclesiarum. 



190 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

itively concerning it."^ The hierarchal way of 
ruling is most evidently not aboriginal in the 
church, but is the fruit of antiquated changes. 

Why, then, should we cling to practices which, 
however antiquated, were in their origin innova- 
tions upon the pristine usage. " An error by 
continuance of time can never become a truth, 
but only the more inveterate error." Suppose 
that, with our present views and feelings, all 
Christendom were to urge some novelty upon us 
for our adoption — should we feel under the 
slightest obligations to adopt it ? Certainly we 
should not. But suppose that, with the same 
correct views and feelings which we now have 
on the subject, we had lived in the third or fourth 
centuries ; when so many hierarchal novelties 
were introduced and imposed : — should we have 
felt obligated to submit to them then ? We cer- 
tainly should not. Why then should we submit 
to the same things now ? They were innova- 
tions when they were first introduced, and they 
have been mere innovations ever since. Our 
stal-vvort sires trampled them in the dust, and 
strode ruthlessly over them all, that they might 
plant their feet upon the rock of truth, that rock 
of prhiiitive formation. They were solicitous 



* Biblioth. Patrum. Tom. III., Cent. III., p 183. 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 191 



to base the fabric of their churches on none but 
a scriptural antiquity : for they knew that the 
Word of God is not only ancient of days, but 
that it " abideth forever." They embraced the 
maxim of Peter Martyr, admitting " nothing* 
without, nothing against, nothing beside, nothing 
beyond, the divine Scripture." 

A recent writer, who has treated these sub- 
jects with consummate ability, tells us truly, that 
" this has ever been the great principle of Puri- 
tanism : that God's Word is the sole and suffi- 
cient standard of faith and duty." Nearly a 
century after the landing of the Pilgrims, an as- 
sembly of Connecticut ministers, in setting forth 
their general assent to the Savoy Confession of 
Faith, as containing the system of doctrine which 
they embraced, — deemed it important to preface 
that act and confession with these words, worthy 
to be written in broad letters of living light. 
" We do not assume to ourselves that any thing 
is to be taken upon trust from us, but commend 
to our people the following counsels : 1. That 
you be immovably and unchangeably agreed in 
the only sufficient and invariable rule of religion, 
which is THE Holy Scripture, the fixed canon, 
incapable of addition or diminution. You ought 

TO ACCOUNT NOTHING ANCIENT THAT WILL NOT 
STAND BY THIS RULE ; AND NOTHING NEW THAT 



192 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

WILL. 2. That you be determined by this rule 
in the whole of religion. That your faith be 
right and divine, the Word of God must be the 
foundation of it, and the authority of the Word the 
reason of it.'"^ Such noble advices will never 
be heard from the lips of the assertors of priestly 
power. Their only study is to circumscribe the 
rights of the people, and restrain them from that 
use of "private judgment," which God requires 
of every accountable being. 



SECTION II. 

THE NEW ENGLAND CHURCH GOVERNMENT AS 
RESPECTS CATHOLICITY. 

By catholicity is meant that generous and lov- 
ing spirit, by which every Christian embraces, in 
the arms of his charity, every other Christian as 
a brother in the Lord. The true apostolical 
Catholicism rejoices in the unity of the spirit, 
rather than in the unity of outward forms. It 
fondly cherishes a union of hearts, even where 
there may be little uniformity of practices. It is 
like the law of vegetative life, which is the same 



*The Piirilaiis and iheir Principleii, by Rev. E. Hall, 8vo., 1846, 
p. irx). 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 193 

in all plants, and marks them as the subjects of 
one and the same kingdom ; and yet developes 
itself in an endless variety of production. It has 
been eloquently said ; — " The productions which 
adorn the paradise of God, from the loftiest ce- 
dar of Lebanon, to the lowliest plant which 
flourishes beneath its shade, are all pervaded by 
the same great principle of spiritual life ; are all 
sustained by the same influences of heaven and 
of earth ; all imbibe living moisture from the 
same dew and shower ; and rejoice in the genial 
radiance of the same celestial sunshine : but 
they, at the same time, present endless varieties 
of form and structure, of fruit and flower, of leaf 
and fragrance." 

Now the catholic spirit of the gospel manifests 
itself by recognizing the same spirit wherever 
found, and however diversified the aspect it wears. 
With false and anti-christian churches, it has 
nothing to do. Its repugnance to them is as 
strong as its attraction toward every evangelical 
communion. Hatred of heresy is a twin flower 
with love of truth. They bloom on a common 
stalk. But while the brotherly love of the gos- 
pel shrinks, like the sensitive plant, from the 
hateful contact of soul-destroying errors, it unfolds 
all its leaves to the congenial breath of purity. 
" We reckon it our distinguishing honor," writes 

VOL. I. 17 



194 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

Samuel Mather, " that, of all the reformed church- 
es, we are the most distant from the church of 
Rome, and the most conformed to the churches 
in the days of the apostles and of primitive Christ- 
ianity." 

As respects this genuine catholicity, the Con- 
gregational churches may affectionately invite 
comparison with their sister-churches of other 
names. And this comparison is invited, not as 
challenging an invidious superiority in this or 
any other point of excellence ; but as kindly 
craving their own proper dues. 

Dr. Owen and our fathers took an open and 
honest stand. " Unless," say they, " men can 
prove that we have not the spirit of God, that we 
do not savingly believe in Jesus Christ ; that we 
do not sincerely love all the saints, his whole 
body and every member of it ; they cannot dis- 
prove our interest in the Catholic Church.""^ 
Our fathers regarded their communion as one 
purified branch of the true church catholic. 
This was the extent of their modest claim. 
They did not pretend to unchurch other commu- 
nions. They did not pretend, that they had an 
exclusive monopoly of covenant blessings. They 
asserted nothing more than a right to regard 



♦ John Owen, D. D., "OfSchism," &c. chap. IV., sec 19. 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 195 

themselves as one province of the kingdom of 
Christ, in which their Lord's laws were more 
strictly enforced than elsewhere. Listen to the 
declaration of John Cotton ;— " We cannot but 
conceive the churches in England were rightly 
gathered, and planted according to the rule of 
the gospel : and all the corruptions found in them 
since, have sprung from popish apostacy in suc- 
ceeding ages, and from want of thorough and 
perfect purging out of that leaven, in the late 
times of Reformation in the days of our fathers. 
So that all the work now, is not to make them 
churches which were none before, but to reduce 
and restore them to their primitive institution." ^ 
The treatise from which this is quoted, though 
prepared by Mr. Cotton, appears to contain the 
results of his brethren's deliberations. From 
this, and innumerable other ^testimonies of the 
same character, it is evident, that our fathers 
were equally ready to assert their own rights, 
and to admit the just rights of others, to a place 
in the house of God. 

In the time of James L, in a pamphlet called 
" A Protestation of the King's Supremacy, made 
in the Name of the afflicted Ministers, &c.," the 
demands of the Puritans were thus expressed. 



* " Way of the Churches in New England, &c., p. Ill" 



196 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

** All that we crave of his majesty and the State, 
is, that with his and their permission, it may be 
lawful for us to worship God according to His 
revealed will ; that we may not be forced to the 
observance of any human rites and ceremonies. 
So long as it shall please the king and parlia- 
ment to maintain the hierarchy or prelacy in 
this kingdom, we are content that they enjoy 
their state and dignity : and we will live as 
brethren among the ministers that acknowledge 
spiritual homage to the spiritual lordships, paying 
them all temporal duties of tithes, and joining 
with them in the service and worship of God so 
far as we may, without our own particular com- 
municating in those human traditions which we 
judge unlawful.'"^ Two distinguished divines, 
during a process against them for non-conformity, 
sent a letter to tl^e Archbishop and the other 
ecclesiastical members of the High Commission, 
in which occurs the following language ; — " Con- 
science is a tender thing, and all men cannot 
look upon the same thing as indifferent ; if, 
therefore, these habits seem so to you, you are 
not to be cmideimied by us ; on the other hand, 
if they do not appear so to us, we ought not to 
be vexed by you. " t 

* Cited in Neale's History, Part I., chap. 1. 
tib. Parin.,chap. 4. 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 197 



In matters of this nature, the Congregational 
churches not only profess catholic principles, but 
practice them. And a square-foot of perform- 
ance is worth an acre of profession. Thus our 
churches lovingly receive the members of other 
evangelical churches to occasional, and even sta- 
ted communion at the Lord's table, and in other 
religious ordinances. We receive such members 
into our own churches without rebapiism : and 
their ministers without reordination. We cordi- 
ally unite with them in associated effort to extend 
the Redeemer's kingdom on the earth. Our men 
and our means have contributed to the gathering 
of thousands of churches which are attached to 
other denominations. What more could we do 
to evince a catholic spirit of fraternal union with 
all who " hold the Head, from which all the body, 
by joints and bands having nourishment minis- 
tered, and knit together, increaseth with the 
increase of God ? " 

Our churches, in respect to Catholicity, will 
compare to great advantage with other religious 
communities. These, in general, will not suffer 
any to enter, or to continue among them, espe- 
cially ministers, unless they will conform to 
every practice, however unessential, or however 
inconsistent with scripture rule. But we, on the 
contrary, are ready to receive from them, without 
17=^ 



198 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

rebaptism or reordination, all whom Christ has 
received. We exact no conditions of them but 
what Christ has required. We demand their 
assent only to such points as all evangelical 
Christians admit to be vital to the faith, and fun- 
damental to salvation. In minor points, every 
one is left to the liberty of his conscience, and to 
the freedom of his own judgment : " admitting," 
as Dr. Increase Mather has said, " of all those, 
though in different persuasions about lesser 
points, of whom it may be judged, in reasonable 
charity, that Christ has received them to the 
glory of God." To which he adds this impres- 
sive remark ; — " Our foundation is in these holy 
mountains ! " ^ 

This is that chief grace of charity which bids 
us to " love alike, though we do not understand 
alike." It teaches us to exercise the mild judg- 
ment of Christian love in the reception of such 
as are weak in the faith. The Cambridge Plat- 
form directs, that " such charity and tenderness 
is to be used, as the weakest Christian, if sin- 
cere, may not be excluded nor discouraged. 
Severity of examination is to be avoided."! 
Dr. Samuel Mather says ; — " My great grand- 
father, the holy and learned Mr. Cotton, once 

* "Elijah's Mantle," p. 16. 
t Chap. XII , sec. 3. 



LIFE OP JOHN COTTON. 199 



said to his congregation, that, if any person, 
though a poor Indian, should step forth and say, 
' I love the Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity and 
truth,' and should testify his willingness to walk 
according to the gospel, though his defects were 
great for ignorance and the like, he should be 
for admitting him to the Lord's table." 

The liberal character of Congregationalism is 
opposed to a strenuous pressing of uniformity. 
The rules of outward uniformity must bend, 
when necessary, to the maxims of spiritual 
unity : even as the precepts of the ceremonial 
law gave way, when they occasionally conflicted 
with the requirements of the moral law. "We 
require no man," says Mr. Cotton, " to swear to 
our church government : nor ever did, that I 
know. Neither do we so much as require, 
that they should profess their approbation of our 
government." "^ These sentiments of one whom 
Dr. Goodwin calls " that apostle of his age," are 
sanctioned by his fellow-laborers and fellow-suf- 
ferers. Thus in Winslow's " Brief Narration," 
numerous examples are given of free communion 
as practiced by the Leyden, Plymouth and Mas- 
sachusetts churches, in their intercourse with 
other reformed churches. " For we ever placed," 



* Holinease of Church Members, p. 29. 



200 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

he says, " a large difference between those that 
grounded their practice on the Word of God, 
though differing from us in the exposition or un- 
derstanding of it, and those that hated such 
Reformers and Reformation, and went on in 
anti-christian opposition to it and persecution of 
it.'"^ Those good men felt that they, so far as 
it rested with them, were in full communion 
with all that was right anywhere in the Christ- 
ian world. As they phrased it, they were " for 
every reformed church, so far as it is reformed." 
They steadily repudiated the charge, so indus- 
triously alledged against them, of being sepa- 
ratists. Said the excellent John Higginson of 
Salem, when preaching the annual election ser- 
mon in 1663 ; — " The end of our coming hither 
was a reformation only of what was amiss or 
defective in the churches we came from : from 
which we made no separation, but a local seces- 
sion only into this wilderness, with true desires 
and endeavors after a more full reformation ac- 
cording to God's Word."t In the same dis- 
course, he affirms ; — " This was, and is, our 
cause, that Christ alone might be acknowledged 
by us, as the only Head, Lord, and Lawgiver in 
his Church ; that his written Word might be 

* Young's Chronicles, p. 391. 

t The Cause of God and hia People, p. 11. 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 201 

acknowledged as the only rule ; that only and 
all his institutions might be observed and en- 
joyed by us ; and that with purity and liberty, 
with peace and power." ^ In carrying out this 
design, our fathers distinguished between things 
necessary, and such as were in their nature 
indifferent. So Higginson, on the same occa- 
sion, taught ; — " In matters divine, where we 
have a clear command, with Moses, we must 
not yield an hoof : but in matters human, stand- 
ing upon extreme right may prove to be extreme 
wrong." t 

Jonathan Mitchell, a kindred spirit, preached 
the annual election sermon for 1667. He then 
took occasion to remark ; — " The good old non- 
conformists were very zealous for reformation, 
and yet always steadfast enemies to separation : 
those two may well consist, and they left us a 
good example therein." I So too John Norton, 
and all the other Massachusetts pastors, in their 
letter to Mr. Dury, have said ; — " We chose 
rather to depart into the remote and unknown 
coasts of the earth, for the sake of a purer wor- 
ship, than to lie down under the hierarchy, in 
the abundance of all things, but with the preju- 



•* The Cause of God and his People, p. 13. 

tib. p. 21. 

I Nehemiah on the Wall in troublous times, p 28. 



202 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

dice of conscience. But that in flying- from our 
country, we should renounce communion with 
such churches as profess the gospel, is a thing 
which we confidently and solemnly deny." "^ If 
this formal disclaimer, to -which they subscribed 
their names, will not absolve them from the 
charge of having made a breach in the catholic 
unity, then no compurgation could avail. 

In a letter written by Oliver Cromwell to the 
Long Parliament, he says ; — " All that believe, 
have the real unity, which is the most glorious ; 
because inward and spiritual, in the Body, and 
to the Head. As for being united in outward 
forms, commonly called Uniformit}?-, every Christ- 
ian will for peace-sake study and do, as far as 
conscience will permit. And for brethren, in 
things of the mind we look for no compulsion, 
but that of light and reason."! The Protector's 
modern vindicator has said ; — " To Cromwell, 
perhaps as much as another, order was lovely, 
and disorder hateful ; but he discerned better 
than some others what order and disorder really 
were. The forest-trees are not in ' order ' be- 
cause they are all dipt into the same shape of 
Dutch dragons, and forced to die or grow in 
that way ; but because in each of them there is 



* Letter to Mr. John Dury, p. 11. 

t Carlisle's Letters and Speeches of O. Cromwell ; Letter XV. 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 203 

the same genuine unity of life, from the inmost 
pith to the uttermost leaf, and they do grow ac- 
cording to that ! " 

We rejoice in that unsurpassed catholicity of 
our churches, which allows a happy liberty to 
them and to their members. And if only there 
be a spiritual and internal union, why should the 
entire visible church be hewn down to the dead 
level of a dull uniformity? Variety in unity 
is the law of heaven. In God himself is seen 
the adorable mystery of trinity in unity, invest- 
ing his " lightning-shrouded seat " with three- 
fold glory and indivisible perfection. The living 
creatures about the throne, variously represent 
distinct powers and virtues. The burning seraph, 
and rushing cherub are glorious in their several 
make and mould. From the brightest archangel 
to the fairest of the ministrant spirits, there are 
many gradations of might and beauty, even as 
one star differeth from another. And amonar 
the ransomed saints from earth, there are patri- 
archs, who, before the flood, were ripening in 
wisdom and grace for a thousand years : and 
with these is the infant which " fell on sleep " 
with the baptismal dew still fresh upon its 
brow. In that day, when God shall " make up 
his jewels," and shall set them in his crown, it 
will be gemmed with a gorgeous variety of 



204 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

precious stones, not cut to one size or shape, nor 
tinged with the same unvarying hue. The 
sapphire shall blaze along with the diamond, 
and the ruby blush between. 



SECTION III. 

THE MERITS OF CONGREGATIONALISM AS RESPECTS 
SCRIPTURAL SPIRITUALITY. 

This mode of church government affords full 
scope to the genius of our religion. The free 
spirit of Christianity is impatient of human fet- 
ters and trammels. It delights in breaking 
yokes, and disinthralling minds which have 
been subjugated by sin and by worldly usages. 
It constitutionally dislikes the confinement of 
imposed forms when they are not of divine ap- 
pointment. 

The grace of God in the heart is a leaven, 
which works from within outwards. It is an 
inner life, which, instead of adapting itself to the 
outward shape it inhabits, conforms that to itself. 
As the solid bones of the head fit themselves to 
the conformation of the soft brain, so the out- 
ward forms of our religion should take their 
shape from the animating and assimilating spirit 
within. And to pursue the figure, — when the 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 205 



brain is dead, so is the skull ; which yet long 
retains its shape after the other has turned to 
dust and disappeared. Even so are all the 
forms of religion empty, dead and defiled, when 
its life and spirit are departed. They are like 
the death's head and cross-bones in the monkish 
cells, fitter to inspire disgust than to awaken 
piety. They belong to the charnel-heaps of a 
lifeless and decayed religion. 

The gospel holds up spiritual worship in op- 
position to that which is merely formal ; and 
therefore it favors a simple worship, not encum- 
bered with pompous observances which would 
be likely to catch the mind of the worshiper, and 
detain it in a ceremonial net-work. The ancient 
attempts to adorn the plain apostolic worship 
with a magnificent ritual, resulted, as Milton 
says, " in drawing down all divine intercourse 
between God and the human soul into an exteri- 
or and bt)dily form; till nearly all the inward 
parts of worship, which issue from the native 
strength of the soul, ran lavishly to the upper 
skin, and there hardened into a crust of formali- 
ty." It is certain, that thfe Congregational dis- 
cipline and worship must languish, so far as the 
power of godliness declines. To maintain our 
father's system in its vigor and efficieiTcy, there 
must be a high degree of spirituality in the 
VOL. I. 18 



206 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

Church, a pervading, vital and active piety. 
This fact is one chief recommendation of that 
system, and is an evidence of its primitive and 
scriptural character. 

There is a strong propensity in man to merge 
the life and spirit of religion in its outward forms. 
When we see persons who were once apparently 
converted to God under the simple ministrations 
of the gospel, betaking themselves at last to a 
punctilious observance of rites and ceremonies, 
we cannot but lament their degenerate piety. 
How applicable to them the language of the 
apostle to those of his converts who were relaps- 
ing into Jewish formalities; — "Are ye so fool- 
ish ? having begun in the Spirit, are ye now 
made perfect by the flesh ?" May we ever have 
grace to escape such vassalage ; for vassalage it 
is, though its serfs are so prone to be proud of 
their shackles. 

One of the oldest Puritans, a martyr to the 
cause of spiritual Christianity, has said ; — " Let 
us, for the appeasing and assurance of our con- 
sciences, give heed to the Word of God, and by 
that golden reed measure our temple, our altar, 
and our worshipers ; even by these rules where- 
by the apostles, those excellent, perfect work- 
men, founded and built the first churches."^ 



* RuiTuw'.s Brief liijcovi'iy, &c., 1590, p. 7. 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 207 

The Bible Christian caiuiol but feel a deep in- 
terest in an ecclesiastical order which studiously 
seeks to arrange itself "according to the pattern 
in the mount." "The Word of God," says a 
modern writer of note, " is our only rule^ in the 
sense both of a law and a standard ; a rule suffi- 
cient, as opposed to all deficiency ; exclusive, as 
relates to any other than the Divine authority 
from which it emanates ; universal, as embracing 
all the principles of human actions ; and ulti- 
mate, as admitting of no appeal from its decis- 
ions.""^ 

He who is born of the Spirit, is born free : and 
where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. 
Jesus is the grand Liberator of souls, bringing 
deliverance to the captives, and the opening of 
the prison doors to them that are bound. The 
children of Zion come of no servile parentage : 
for " Jerusalem which is above is free, which is 
the mother of us all." In short, the religion of 
Jesus is the emancipation of the soul. And so, 
by a sort of natural necessity, it calls for forms 
of government as liberal and popular as disin- 
thralled humanity can wish. The spiritual and 
scriptural forms which our fathers adopted, fully 
meet this requisition. 



* Protestant Nonconformity, by J. Conder, 1818, II., p. 313. 



208 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

In considering the merits of this ancient, 
catholic, and spiritual system, we must not omit 
to speak of its practical tendencies. 

We are led to notice the tendency of Congre- 
gationalism to. enlarge and liberalize the heart. 
Paying little regard to the sectarian peculiarities 
of other communions, it is the less apt to overes- 
timate any peculiarities of its own. Hence it is 
the more ready to enter into such leagues and 
alliances as may foster the communion of church- 
es, without destroying their just independence. 

As it was best adapted to those primitive 
times of the gospel wherein it began, so will it 
be found best adapted to those ultimate times of 
promise, in which the gospel shall prevail over 
all the earth. " Such is the truly liberal and 
catholic spirit, which characterizes the principles 
of Congregationalism, that if the millennium 
were to commence tomorrow, there would be no 
need of modifying or changing any one of those 
principles. It sets up no exclusive terms of 
communion ; it ijisists upon no outward forms, 
or unessential rights as conditions of Christian 
fellowship. It receives all, whom there is evi 
dence to believe Christ has received. On this 
ground, our churches without relinquishing or 
altering any one principle of their organization, 
or polity, might admit to their communion the 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 209 

whole world, converted to Christ, and extend the 
hand of fellowship to all Christians of whatever 
name or denomination. But on the principle of 
the Episcopalians, the millennium can never 
come till the whole world become Episcopalians ; 
and on the principle of the Baptists, the millen- 
nium can never come till the whole world become 
Baptists ; and on the principle of the Papists, the 
millennium can never come till the whole world 
become Papists : but on the principle of the 
Congregationalists, the millennium may come at 
any time, and they be prepared to enter into the 
spirit of it, and embrace in the arms of Christian 
fellowship, all who love the Lord Jesus Christ 
in sincerity and truth, however much they might 
differ in certain points of form and ceremony."^ 

Congregationalism cherishes public spirit, or 
that disposition which prompts men to exertions 
and sacrifices for the general good. Whatever 
happy pre-eminence New England may enjoy, is 
owing to the public spirit diffused throughout her 
population. And it has been diffused mainly 
by the influence of that ecclesiastical order which 
makes every member of the church feel that he 
has something to do for others, as well as for 



* Tribute to the memory of the Pilgrims, by Joel Hawes, D. D., 

p. 87, 83. 

18* 



210 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

himself. This is from the remoter source 
whence are derived those acts of ample munifi- 
cence for which New England is famed. The 
generous benefactions of individuals and of con- 
gregations to promote education, beneficence and 
piety at home and abroad, are chiefly emanation^ 
from the deep-seated springs which our church 
polity has opened. This is the rod of God which 
smites the rock, and causes streams to gush forth 
in the desert, and make it glad. 

It is obvious that such a church polity elevates 
the popular rights, and favors civil liberty, and 
imparts the capacity to maintain it. People who 
have been bred to self-government in an inde- 
pendent church are competent to govern them- 
selves in a free commonwealth. A people so 
trained must feel an equal aversion to despotism 
and to anarchy. They can have no sympathy 
with either. They will be the sworn foes of op- 
pression, and the fast friends of order. The 
sense of individual responsibility which has been 
aroused in the church -meeting, will not sleep in 
the town-meeting. It will ever be a wakeful 
sentinel by the watch-fires of freedom. It was 
on their system of independent churches, that 
our forefathers based the political liberties of the 
country. And the foundation which they laid 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 211 

has stood firm as the granite hills. And so long 
as that system of independent churches shall 
predominate in the land, so long will it be mor- 
ally impossible for aspiring hierarchs to tread 
religious freedom in the dust. 

Freedom of inquiry after truth is eminently 
promoted by Congregationalism. It tells every 
man that he is personally responsible to God for 
knowing the truth. It tells him, that he cannot 
throw oftMiis responsibility on pope or patriarch, 
on proud prelate or plain pastor, on the living or 
the dead. The mind once stirred up to investi- 
gation, will never more lie down submissive to 
the dictates of authority. " Human reason, when 
the fit of free inquiry is upon it, is in truth like 
a wild beast; the smaller the cage in which you 
confine it, the more fiercely it will rage." The 
wiser course is, to place the truth fully in the 
way, and then give full scope to the speaker. If 
he be seeking sincerely, he will soon close with 
the obvious truths which will meet him on every 
side. If he be not sincere in his seeking, he will 
at least, escape the deeper debasement of an en- 
forced and groveling hypocrisy. God himself, 
all-powerful as he is, wins the heart by persua- 
sion rather than by force. 

In exemplifying the liberal character of our 



212 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

principles, we cannot help quoting the well- 
known farewell address of John Robinson to the 
Plymouth colonists. " He was very confident 
that the Lord had more truth and light yet to 
break forth out of his holy Word. He took occa- 
sion also miserably to bewail the state and con- 
dition of the Reformed Churches, who were 
come to a period in religion, and would go no 
further than the instruments of their Reforma- 
tion. As, for example, the Lutherans, they 
could not be drawn to go beyond what Luther 
saw; for whatever part of God's will he had 
further imparted and revealed to Calvin, they 
will rather die than embrace it. And so also, 
saith he, you see the Calvinists, they stick 
where he left them ; a misery much to be 
lamented ; for though they were precious shin- 
ing lights in their times, yet God had not 
revealed his whole will to them ; and were they 
now living, saith he, they would be as ready 
and willing to embrace further light, as that they 
had received. Here also he put us in mind of 
our church covenant, at least that part of it 
whereby we promise and covenant with God 
and one another, to receive whatsoever light or 
truth shall be made known to us from his writ- 
ten Word ; but withal exhorted us to take heed 
what we received for truth, and well to examine, 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON 



213 



and compare it and weigh it with other Script- 
ures of truth before we received it. For, saith 
he, it is not possible the christian world should 
come so lately out of such thick anti-christian 
darkness, and that full perfection of knowledge 
should break forth at once." ^ These noble 
instructions given by the Leyden pastor, have 
been grossly perverted to sanction a reception of 
errors which that great man had examined and 
rejected long before. Even in his day, so far 
from being regarded as " new light," they were 
renounced as " old darkness." 

We have another example of the liberal char- 
acter of Puritanism, which is not less noble 
than Robinson's address, and is not so liable to 
be wrested into a plea for the adoption of error. 
It occurs in the dedication of John Norton's 
" Orthodox Evangelist ; "— " Even fundamental 
truths, which have been the same in all genera- 
tions, have been, and shall be, transmitted more 
clear from age to age in the times of reforma- 
tion ; until that which is perfect is come, and 
that which is imperfect be done away. The 
truth held forth is the same ; though with more 
of Christ, and less of man. Such addition is no 



* Gov. Wiaslow's Report in Young'a Chronicles, p. 396. 



214 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

innovation, but an illustration : not new light, 
but new sight." And such has been the case. 
Theologians, without tampering with what our 
forefathers held to be fundamental articles of 
faith, have greatly improved the mode of pre- 
senting and illustrating the articles of their 
belief. They have not changed the mirror : 
but by raising its polish, it reflects a clearer 
image of the truth. 

As Governor Winslow once remarked, " the 
primitive churches are the only pattern which 
the churches of Christ in New England have in 
their eye, not following Luther, Calvin, Knox, 
Ainsworth, Robinson, Ames, or any other, fur- 
ther than they follow Christ and his apostles." 
Mr. Cotton, no less than the good Robin- 
son, lamented the disposition of the reformed 
churches in Europe to keep at a stay just where 
their reformers left them, rather shrinking back 
than going further in the path of improvement. 
These are some of his words ; — " Who knoweth 
not, they have all been more studious and tena- 
cious of what form the doctrine, and worship, 
and discipline was left unto them, than inquisi- 
tive after further light ; yea, sometimes more 
inclinable to look back unto Egypt, than to 
hasten toward Canaan ? — Seeing our faith rest- 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 215 

eth only on the Word of the Lord, and his 
Spirit breathing therein ; and the Word hath 
promised that more and more light shall break 
forth in these times, till Antichrist be utterly 
confounded and abolished ; we shall sin against 
the grace and worth of Truth, if we confine our 
truth to the divines of present or former ages."^ 
This breathes the free spirit of Christianity, 
which can be confined to no narrower limits 
than the infinite fullness of eternal truth. 

Our forefathers favored the same principles of 
government both in church and state. It is said 
that democracy necessarily runs into aristocracy, 
because the executive power must fall into the 
hands of a few. But our forefathers desired that 
this aristocracy should not rest upon the accident 
of birth, nor the circumstance of wealth, but upon 
the personal merit of individuals. They desired 
so to order the Church and State, that, by the 
natural course of events, wisdom and goodness 
should rise to -their proper elevation, and have 
their proportional ascendency in the direction of 
aflfairs. What Governor Winthrop desired, was 
to have the administration consigned into the 



* A Modest and Clear Answer, &c., 1642, chapter X. 



216 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

hands of the best of the people, and of the wisest 
of these. This scheme reminds us of the prom- 
ise which Ion exacted from his senate ; — 

" Promise, if I leave 
No issue, that the sovereign power shall live 
In the affections of the general heart, 
And in the wisdom of the best." 

It may be said, that this sounds very well in 
theory or in poetry ; but cannot be completely 
attained in practice. To this we answer, that 
our fathers were " not of those who dream of 
perfection in this world." But they set their 
standard of perfection high, and sought to ap- 
proximate to it as nearly as they could. 

And how did they expect to make the sov- 
ereign power reside " in the wisdom of the 
best," when every thing was left depending 
upon the popular elections ? They sought to 
effect this result, by making the people see that 
their own interest required it should be so. To 
bring the people at large to understand this 
truth, that their interests required that the pow- 
ers of government should be lodged in the hands 
of " the wisest of the best," our fathers depended 
upon the school master and the minister. In 
other words, they would have the people trained 
up to an intelligent piety, which would, almost 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 217 

with certainty, so use the elective franchise, that 
the best qualified men should be chosen to office. 
Hence their zeal for education, and the early- 
provision they made for the college, and common 
and grammar schools. That the whole body of 
the people should be educated was essential to 
the success of their political theory. For the 
same reason did they take such anxious care to 
provide for an able and orthodox ministry. 
They would allow no town to be settled, except 
by a number competent to form a church, and to 
sustain a minister of the gospel. Hence too the 
laws which required all the people to attend on 
public worship. All this was done with a view 
to accomplish the object of their social compact, 
by training up a people who shall have good 
sense and good feeling enough to commit the 
political power to the wisest and best men 
among themselves. The success of our fathers' 
plans has, in a good measure, justified their 
theory of government, and most of their meth- 
ods of securing its beneficial operation. 

In reviewing the result of their labors, our 

feelings are divided between exultation over the 

happy fruits of their pains, and sorrow of heart 

that so much of the good seed they planted has 

VOL. I. 19 



218 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

failed to ripen. Great has been the measure, 
both of success, and of disappointment. And as 
each, in rapid aUernation, has engaged our 
thoughts, 

A wild and variant blast our bugles sent, 
Wandering 'iwixt notes of triumph and lament. 

But after making every allowance for numerous 
partial failures of their schemes, the grand 
social and moral experiment of our Puritan 
fathers has been blessed with eminent pros- 
perity. It is true, that many tares are growing 
in the field, but great will be the wheaten har- 
vest that shall be reaped. The world cannot 
turn up to the face of day, for the sun to shine 
upon, a region more flourishing and fair than 
ours. Surely God " hath not dealt so with any 
nation." To His name be all the praise ! 

But the chief reward of our fathers' pious 
toils is yet to come. They looked for more 
than earth can give ; they expected all that 
heaven can grant. They are not doomed to 
disappointment. They shall obtain the prize 
they sought, on the saints' coronation-day. Oh 
then, — when the hosts of heaven shall be mar- 
shaled in their bright array, when the universe 
of God shall be assembled to the sight, when 
" all the pomp and prodigality of heaven " shall 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 219 

be lavished forth to grace the scene, — while an- 
gel trumpets and celestial harps shall ring out 
their melodious thunderings, while jubilant alle- 
luias, like the surges of the voiceful sea, shall 
burst in all the tumult of delight, — then shall 
those holy men receive their triumphal garlands 
whose amaranthine wreaths shall never fade 
away. Robed in light, and throned in glory, 
they shall reign with the Son of God forever- 
more. 



220 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON 



CHAPTER VIII. 

Difficulties in the way of our forefathers. Relation between Church 
and State. Abstract of Mo-saic laws. Codification of laws. Rela- 
tion between the ministers and the magistrates. Mr. Norton. 
Mr. Cotton's sermon. Letter to Lord Say and Seal. First associ- 
ation of ministers. Mode of supporting the ministry. Public 
spirit of those times. Roger Williams banished. Controversy 
between him and Mr. Cotton. Revival of religion in First Church. 
Church discipline. Anne Hutchinson. The Antinomian coutro. 
versy. John Wheelwright. Sir Henry Vane. Mr. Cotton impli- 
cated. Discovers the deceptions practiced upon him. Regains his 
good standing. General Court. Offence at Mr. Wilson's sermon. 
Offence at Mr. Cotton's speech. Rowland Hill. Mr. Wheelwright 
condemned. First synod held in New England. Eighty errors 
condemned. Mr. Wheelwright banished. Mrs. Hutchinson ad- 
monished. She recants. She relapses. Is excommunicaied. 
Banished. Her unhappy end. Mr. Cotton writes against Mr. 
Barnard and Mr. Ball of England. 

The enterprise in which our fathers were here 
engaged, when Mr. Cotton joined them, was one 
of great difficulty, as well as great importance. 
They had some general ideas, derived from their 
sacred oracle, the Bible, of the nature of the free 
government, in the Church and in the State, 
which they wished to set up. But they were 
sorely perplexed in trying to reduce those ideas 
into practical forms. It was a novel undertak- 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 



221 



ing. They had no expetience of other men to 
guide them. They were pioneers. They were ' 
to strike out a new path, through jungle and 
through forest, to reach the high and glorious 
results toward which they were looking. But, 
at the outset, they were themselves confused in 
the intricate and untraveled maze. They were at 
a loss to find the due bearings and proper start- 
ing points. 

At this juncture Mr. Cotton came to their aid. 
To them he seemed like that other John, who 
was the Lord's herald :— "the voice of one cry- 
ing in the wilderness, ' Prepare ye the way of the 
Lord, make his paths straight.' " 

He never attained to the great conclusion, to 
which 'the present age has come, that there ought 
to be an entire separation of Church and State. 
But he led the way to it, by taking a position 
much nearer to it than that which was then oc- 
cupied by the Christian world. He taught, that 
the ecclesiastical power is totally distinct from 
the civil power ; and that, though they be closely 
connected, they are never to be confounded. 
This distinction prepared the way for their sep- 
aration. Mr. Cotton thus expressed himself on 
the subject. "God's institutions, such as the 
19^ 



222 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

government of church and commonwealth be, 
may be close and compact, and coordinate one 
to another, and yet not confounded. God hath 
so framed the state of church government and 
ordinances, that they may be compatible to any 
commonwealth, though never so much disordered 
in his frame. But yet when a commonwealth 
hath liberty to mould his own frame, I conceive 
the Scripture hath given full direction for the 
right ordering of the same, and yet in such sort 
as may best maintain the well-being of the 
church. Mr. Hooker doth often quote a saying 
out of Mr. Cartwright, though I have not read it 
in him, that no man fashioneth his house to his 
hangings, but his hangings to his house. It is 
better that the commonwealth be fashioned to 
the setting forth of God's house, which is his 
church, than to accommodate the church frame 
to the civil state. "=^ 

In following out these sentiments, the colony, 
where "the commonwealth had that liberty to 
mould its own frame," could not fail to conform 
to the republicanism of the Congregational 
church polity in which our fathers believed. 



* Hutchinaon's History of Mass., vol. 1, p. 437. 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 223 

As all the freemen of this new-born republic 
were church members, it was thought that the 
law of God ought to be their rule in civil affairs. 
The General Court desired Mr. Cotton to draw 
up an abstract of the laws of Moses, omitting 
such as were of temporary obligation, and in 
their nature peculiar to the Jewish polity. This 
service he performed, and the fruit of his labor 
was many years after printed at London by 
William Aspinwall, in 1655. From this trans- 
action some malicious joker has taken occasion 
to say, that our fathers voted that they would be 
governed by the laws of Moses, till they could 
find time to make better. The jester had per- 
sonal reasons, no doubt, for disliking the Mosaic 
legislation, which is very severe upon slanderers 
and such as bear false witness. Mr. Davenport 
gives the following correct account of the mat- 
ter. "Considering that these plantations had 
liberty to mould their civil order into that form 
which they should find to be best for themselves, 
and that here the churches and commonwealth 
are complanted together in holy covenant and 
fellowship with God in Christ Jesus, he did, at 
the request of the General Court in the Bay, 
draw an abstract of the laws of judgment deliv- 



224 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

ered from God by Moses to the commonwealth 
of Israel, so far forth as they are of morale that 
is, of perpetual and universal equity among all 
nations, especially such as these plantations are : 
wherein he advised that Theocracy, that is, 
God's government, might be established, as the 
best form of government, where the people that 
choose civil rulers are God's people in covenant 
with him."^ 

Mr. Cotton's abstract was not adopted. Anoth- 
er drawn upon the same general principles, but 
with numerous deviations, some of them impor- 
tant, obtained the preference. It was printed in 
London in 1641, and has been supposed to be 
the joint labor of Mr. Cotton and Sir Henry 
Vane.t 

This was soon superseded by another body of 
laws of the same general character ; but with a 
much better arrangement. It is remarkable, that 
the statutory system which was eventually adopt- 
ed, was a code of laws systematically arranged 
under one hundred heads. It has been one of 
the chief commendations of the mighty mind of 



* From a manuscript life of John Cotton by Mr. Davenport, quoted 
in Hutchinson's Original Papers, p. 161. 
t Reprinted Mass. Hist. Soc. C'ollec, Ist Series, vol. V. p. 171, &c. 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 



225 



Napoleon, that he was the first in modern times 
to apply the principles of plain practical common 
sense to the subject of legislation. That ^reat 
man anticipated that " his fame in the eyes of 
posterity would rest even more on the code which 
bore his name, than on all the victories he had 
won." It has become the basis of the legislation 
of half of Europe. Whhin a few years the same 
method has been adopted in several of our States, 
and it has resulted in that recent revision of the 
statutes of Massachusetts, by which a chaos of 
laws was reduced to order and consistency. It 
is wonderful to find that this last great improve- 
ment, the codification of laws, was discovered and 
put in practice in this colony more than two cen- 
turies ago: and our learned modern citizens 
have, unawares, reverted to the method of their 
fathers. The honor of this boast of legislation 
belongs to the Rev. Nathaniel Ward, the witty 
and pious minister of the ancient town of Ips- 
wich ; and also a student of the science of law.=^ 
Mr. Cotton advised the people to persevere in 
their design of setting up a Theocracy, or divine 
government over a Christian commonwealth. 



* Ward's Code is reprinted in the Colleclions of Massachusella 
Historical Society, 3d series, vol. VII., p.— 



226 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

His plan was, to have the public affairs adminis- 
tered agreeably to the principles and require- 
ments of revealed religion, by executive officers 
appointed by the free election of the people. 
The people were to choose their own governors 
and other magistrates: and these officers were 
to govern themselves by the instructions of the 
Word of God. God, speaking by his Word, 
was to be owned as chief Lawgiver and supreme 
Head of their community. They who are dis- 
posed to laugh when they see the legal enact- 
ments of our ancestors backed up with texts of 
Scripture, may as well save half a smile for 
Lord Bacon, and other of the highest judicial 
functionaries of England, who, in those times 
often confirmed their decisions in the same man- 
ner. Whoever will turn over the older parlia- 
mentary debates, will find the haughtiest caval- 
iers in the House of Commons, triumphantly 
clinching an argument by appealing to Holy Writ. 
And doubtless, when the prophecies are more 
completely fulfilled in the coming of the kingdom 
of God on earth, the day will come round again, 
when it will be deemed meet for Christian people 
to regulate their political affairs by scriptural 
principles. 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 227 



As one result of this attempt in our colony, the 
ministry was brought into a very close alliance 
with the magistracy. For both the ministry and 
the magistracy, the people cherished a religious 
veneration. Nor were they jealous of the inti- 
mate relations of their temporal and spiritual 
rulers, so long as the keys of power remained in 
the hands of the people by means of the elective 
franchise, both in Church and Commonwealth. 
Whenever any disposition to engross undue 
authority was betrayed, the people, notwith- 
standing their profound respect for their leaders, 
always promptly applied the never-failing reme- 

Good Mr. Norton says; — "It was an usual 
thing, henceforth, for the Magistrate to consult 
with the ministers in hard cases, especially in 
matters of the Lord ; yet so, as notwithstanding 
occasional conjunction, religious care was had 
of avoiding confusion of counsels : Moses and 
Aaron rejoiced, and kissed one another in the 
mount of God." 

As an illustration of this matter, we may refer 
to an affair which took place in September, 1634. 
Mr. Hooker and many of his friends, who had 
at first settled in Newtown, were anxious to 



22S LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

remove to Connecticut. Much opposition was 
made to their removal : and the two coordinate 
branches of the General Court came into very 
serious collision. Neither branch would yield 
to the other. In this painful emergency the 
whole Court appointed a day of fasting and 
humiliation, which was observed in all the con- 
gregations. A few days after, the Court met 
again. Before proceeding to business, Mr. Cot- 
ton preached from Haggai,2: 4; — "Yet now be 
strong, O Zerubbabel, saith the Lord ; and be 
strong, Joshua son of Josedech the high priest ; 
and be strong, all ye people of the land, saith the 
Lord, and work ; for I am with you, saith the Lord 
of hosts." In his sermon the preacher severally 
described the strength of the magistracy, minis- 
try, and people. Thus the strength of Zerubbabel, 
or the magistrate, is his official power and au- 
thority : the strength of Joshua, or the minister, 
is the purity of his life and teaching ; and the 
strength of the people is their liberty. The 
preacher went on to show, that, in matters of 
common concern, each of these three estates in 
the first instance, had a negative voice upon the 
doings of the others ; and yet that the ultimate 
resolution ought to be in the whole body of the 
people. The sermon closed with an answer to 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 229 



all objections, and a solemn declaration of the 
people's right and duty to maintain their true 
liberties against any unjust violence or aggress- 
ion. This discourse gave extraordinary satis- 
faction. All animosities and difliculties vanished, 
the various conflicting interests were reconciled, 
and all hands went to work vigorously, unani- 
mously and peacefully from that day. Alluding 
to this atiair, the reverend historian, Hubbard, 
says; — "Mr. Cotton had such an insinuating 
and melting way in his preaching, that he would 
usually carry his very adversary captive after 
the triumphant chariot of his rhetoric." It was 
in accordance with the views expressed in that 
"political sermon," that he said on another occa- 
sion; — "Purity preserved in the church, will 
preserve well-ordered liberty in the people ; and 
both of them establish well-balanced authority in 
the magistrates. God is the author of all these 
three."=^ 

It was another effect of his all-subduing per- 
suasiveness, that certain men of distinction who, 
in the heat of the recent controversy, had spoken 
disrespectfully to some of the magistrates, "being 
reproved for the same in open court, did gravely 
and humbly acknowledge their fault." 



# Letter to Lord Say and Seal. 
VOL. L 20 



230 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

The first association in Massachusetts was 
formed by the ministers of Boston and the vicin- 
ity about the year 1635. It met once in two 
weeks at the houses of the members. The 
usual business was the discussion of some impor- 
tant theological question. This association was, 
by some, regarded with a godly jealousy, lest it 
might, at a future day, encroach on the liberties 
of the people. The experience of more than 
two centuries has proved that this was a needless 
jealousy. The associations of Massachusetts, 
both local and general, have been highly useful 
and influential. At the same time, the indepen- 
dence of the churches has suffered no infringe- 
ment. 

Mr. Cotton's disposition to popularize the 
whole administration of religious affairs showed 
itself in the manner in which he chose to receive 
his salary. He insisted that it should be derived 
from the free-will offerings of the people. Once 
each Lord's Day, at the close of public worship, 
every member of the congregation who felt dis- 
posed to contribute to the support of the gospel, 
walked up to the elders' seat, where one of the 
deacons received the offerings. The proceeds 
were deposited in a public chest, out of which 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 231 

Mr. Wilson and his colleague received for their 
support one hundred pounds per annum. Con- 
sidering how much greater was the value of 
money in those days, none of our ministers are 
now more amply maintained. The grace of God 
was bestowed on the First Church of Boston, 
even as, of old, on the churches of Macedonia ; 
so that, " in a great trial of affliction, the abun- 
dance of their joy and their deep poverty abound 
ed unto the riches of their liberality." 

Nor were the pastors, on their part, less dis- 
interested. Not to speak of the proverbial 
generosity of that whole-souled man, Mr. Wil- 
son, we find, that, when subscriptions were 
made for charitable purposes, Mr. Cotton's 
donation would equal that of the wealthiest of 
his flock. In effecting his settlement here, he 
incurred expenses amounting to eighty pounds, 
which, at that period, was a pretty round sum. 
But when the people wished to reimburse it, he 
declined the offer, as not being necessary in his 
circumstances. 

Indeed there is no trait more admirable in 
our fathers, than their wonderful public spirit, 
and the readiness of individuals to make per- 
sonal sacrifices for the general good. When 



232 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

people elsewhere marvel at the public and pri- 
vate munificence of the citizens of Boston 
toward all objects of literary, philanthropic and 
religious interest, we can say that they came 
honestly by this ennobling disposition, for they 
derived it in its full strength from their Calvin- 
istic progenitors. 

Most of the colonists who were men of prop- 
erty greatly impaired their estates by the sacri- 
fices they made for the common cause. They 
were ever prompt to extend to each other a 
helping hand. Thus, when Governor Win- 
throp, neglecting his own affairs in his diligent 
service of the public, met with severe losses, 
the people spontaneously presented him with 
five hundred pounds. 

The early part of Mr. Cotton's ministry here 
was disturbed by some violent storms of contro- 
versy. After these tempests had " wrought 
themselves to rest," there followed many calm 
and peaceful years. 

In 1635, Eoger Williams was banished from 
the colony. The merits of this controversy will 
be discussed in another chapter. Let it here be 
said, however, and that with all respect for the 
memory and character of that " fiery Welch- 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTO|<r. 233 

man," that the action of our fathers in this 
matter is capable of a good defence : and that 
the condemnation they have generally received 
has been excessive and unjust. The matter is 
now mentioned merely with reference to Mr. 
Cotton's share in the transactions. 

While the magistrates had the case of Mr. 
Williams under consideration, Mr. Cotton, with 
the neighboring ministers, whom the accused 
had once professed to hold in the highest ven- 
eration, presented a request that the civil 
authorities would stay their proceedings till the 
elders " had in a church-way endeavored his 
conviction and repentance." The ministers 
hoped, that it was not from seditious principle 
that Mr. Williams had acted ; but from a mis- 
guided conscience, which they expected to be 
able to set right. The magistrates acceded to 
the proposal of the ministers ; but the governor, 
who too well understood the " nature of the 
creature," foretold to them ; — " You are de- 
ceived in the man, if you think he will conde- 
scend to learn of any of you." When other 
measures failed, and Mr. Williams was ban- 
ished, Mr. Cotton wielded his pen in behalf of 
the magistrates. He published a letter concern- 
20* 



234 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

ingf the power of the civil magistrate in matters 
of religion. The banished man replied to this 
letter ; and also published a tract against the 
" Bloody Tenent of Persecution " for the cause 
of conscience. Mr. Cotton rejoined with an- 
other, entitled, " The Bloody Tenent washed 
and made White in the Blood of the Lamb, 
being discussed and discharged of blood guilti- 
ness by just defence, in answer to Mr. Wil- 
liams ; to which is added a reply to Mr. 
Williams' answer to Mr. Cotton's letter." His 
opponent retorted with a treatise, styled, " The 
Bloody Tenent yet more bloody by Mr. Cotton's 
endeavor to wash it white in the Blood of the 
Lamb, &c." Here the dispute ended, as is 
usual in such cases, each party satisfied that he 
had the best of the argument. 

For three or four years in the beginning of 
Mr. Cotton's ministry, the internal prosperity of 
his church was unexampled ; and would, at this 
day, be regarded as a powerful revival. There 
were more conversions and admissions than in 
all the other churches of the colony. Many 
persons of profane and dissolute lives were sur- 
prisingly reformed, and received into the bosom 
of the church. The discipline, admirably ad- 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 235 

ministered under the pastor Wilson and the 
ruling elder Leveret, was of singular benefit to 
the congregation. There were many " gifted 
brethren " into whose lips the Spirit of grace 
was poured, to the great edification and profit of 
the whole body of which they were members, 
which was in danger of being " exalted above 
measure through the abundance of the revela- 
tions." 

But clouds of thick darkness soon overcast 
the sunny prospect, and poured down their tor- 
rents, accompanied with the withering flash and 
the terrifying thunder. All at once the field, 
which was waving with such goodly harvest, 
was found to" be sown with tares. Noxious 
weeds crept into that well-watered garden of 
gracious plants, and " roots of bitterness spring- 
ing up troubled them, and thereby many were 
defiled." 

The prominent instigator of this mischief was 
a daughter of Eve, named Anne Hutchinson. 
She was probably a pious woman ; and cer- 
tainly an artful one. On the ground of the 
apostle's direction, that the elder women should 
teach the younger, she used to convene large 
numbers of females at her house, where she in- 



236 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

Stilled into them the doctrines of antinomianism 
in their most demoralizing form. That she was 
worthy of the heaviest ecclesiastical censures, no 
competent judge of such matters can doubt. 
The justice of the civil disabilities under which 
she was eventually placed, must be considered 
elsewhere. 

Her most active supporter was Rev. John 
Wheelwright, her brother-in-law, who preached, 
as an assistant, within the extensive bounds of 
the Boston church, which then included Brain- 
tree, where he principally labored. His parti- 
zans urged to have him associated as colleague 
with the other ministers : but Mr. Cotton evaded 
the connection, on the ground that Mr. Wheel- 
wright was an unsafe and violent man, and apt 
to raise questions of doubtful disputation. 

Another of Mrs. Hutchinson's helpers was 
Sir Henry Vane, then a very young man, and 
newly arrived in the colony, where, by his 
grave and dignified demeanor, he wonderfully 
took with the people, stealing their hearts, like 
Absalom, from their beloved Winthrop, whom 
he speedily supplanted in the chair of state. By 
his connection with the female heresiarch, he 
lost his popularity, and his office, and soon re- 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTOlf. 237 

turned to England. He there acted a very 
conspicuous part during the civil wars, resisted 
Cromwell's assumption of the protectorate, and 
was a staunch Genevan republican to the last. 
He died as a political martyr, being beheaded, 
at fifty years of age, for high treason against the 
ever-treacherous Stuarts. He is a striking in- 
stance of that late retribution by which posterity 
reverses the judgment of former times. The 
ablest literary arbiters of the present day, pro- 
claim this person, once so much abused, as one 
of the moral heroes of his eventful times, as a 
colossal champion of popular rights, and both as 
a civilian and theologian, of vast and varied 
abilities. As a writer of prose in that age of 
great thinkers and authors, they announce him 
to be inferior only to the matchless Milton, and 
scarcely second even to him. That great poet 
has paid him a tribute sufficient to enrich his 
memory for many an age, in the following son- 
net "to Sir Henry Vane, the younger." 

" Vane, young in years, but in sage council old, 

Than whom a belter senator ne'er held 

The helm of Rome, when gowns, not arms, repelled 

The fierce Epirot and the African bold; 

Whether lo settle peace, or to unfold 

The drift of hollow stales, hard to be spelled ; 



238 LTFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

Then to advise how War may, best upheld, 

]\Iove by her two main nerves, iron and gold, 

In all her equipage : besides to know 

Both spiritual potoer and civil, what each means, 

What severs each thou hast learned, which few have done : 

The bounds of either sword to thee we owe : 

Therefore on thy firm hand Religion leans 

In peace, and reckons thee her eldest son." 



Upheld by these powerful supporters, Mrs. 
Hutchinson was enabled to raise a terrible com- 
raotion in the community. They had the 
address to procure, for a time, the countenance 
of Mr. Cotton. This they did, by giving him 
such explanations in private conversation, as 
satisfied his unsuspicious nature of the ortho- 
doxy of their sentiments. Captivated by their 
ardent zeal and high professions, he gave heed 
to these " seducing spirits " for a time. But 
when, to his consternation, the vail of duplicity 
was thrown aside, he was shocked to find that 
he had unwittingly lent the sanction of his name 
to opinions so dangerous and corrupt. Upon 
this, the Antinomians charged him with dis- 
sembling, holding one set of opinions in the 
pulpit, and another in private discourse. This 
is the only transaction of Mr. Cotton's life which 
seems to have given serious offence to his breth- 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 239 

ren, who charged him with wavering . and 
timidity. 

His only fauh, however, appears to have been 
the too great facility with which he suffered 
persons whom he had held in the highest esti- 
mation, to delude him as to their real sentiments, 
and to father their errors upon him. As soon as 
he was disabused, he exerted himself to repair 
the mischief. He publicly lamented his fault, 
in that he had slept in false security, while the 
enemy was sowing tares. In a letter to Mr. 
Davenport, he says ; — " The truth is, the body 
of the island is bent to backsliding into error and 
delusions : the Lord pity and pardon them, and 
me also, who have been so slow to see their 
windings, and subtle contrivances, and insinua- 
tions in all their transactions." Governor Win- 
throp gives this testimony of him, that, "finding 
how he had been abused, and made, as himself 
said, their stalking-horse, (for they pretended to 
hold nothing but what Mr. Cotton held, and 
himself did think the same,) did spend most of 
his time, both publicly and privately, to discover 
those errors, and to reduce such as were gone 
astray." Among others reclaimed by his efforts 
was Robert Lenlhal, the minister of Weymouth. 



240 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

Long afterwards, on a general fast-day, " Mr. 
Cotton, in his exercise that day at Boston, did 
confess and bewail, as the churches, so his 
own security, sloth and credulity, whereupon 
so many and dangerous errors had gotten up 
and spread in the church ; and went over all 
the particulars, and showed how he came to be 
deceived ; (the errors being framed in words so 
near the truths which he had preached,) and the 
falsehood of the maintainers of them, who usu- 
ally would deny to him what they had delivered 
to others."^ He was sufficiently humbled for 
a fault which appears to have been only the 
amiable infirmity of a heart too generous and 
confiding. When his eyes were opened to the 
duplicity which had been practiced, he spared 
no pains that he might rectify his mistake, and 
was very successful in arresting the spread of 
the evil. " By that means," says Hubbard, 
'* did that reverend and worthy minister of the 
gospel recover his former splendor throughout 
the whole country of New England, with his 
wonted esteem and interest in the hearts of all 
his friends and acquaintance, so as his latter 



* Savage's Winthrop, I. 253 and 280. 



\ 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 24 1 

days were like the clear shining of the sun after 
rain." 

Nearly the whole of the members of the 
church who resided witliin the present limits of 
Boston, favored the cause of Mrs. Hutchinson at 
the outset, with the exception of the pastor Mr. 
Wilson, Governor Winthrop and two or three 
others. This small minority had on its side 
all the ministers in the colony, except Mr. 
Wheelwright and Mr. Cotton ; and nearly all 
the laymen of note. In this contest, so violent 
and almost unintelligible, it is surprising to see 
the same church, retaining as its ministers, 
those who were accounted the heads of the 
opposing parties. This fact, far more than any 
argument, evinces the prudence and Christian 
temper of the two men. 

The principal errors of the Hutchinsonians 
were, first, the denial that sanctification is, in 
any sense whatever, an evidence of justifica- 
tion : and secondly, the assertion that the Holy 
Ghost dwells personally in every believer. Sir 
Henry Vane must needs go a little farther, and 
maintain that the Holy Ghost is united to the 
believer, in the same manner as the divine 
nature is united with the man Christ Jesus. 

VOL. I. 21 



242 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

The General Court took up the matter : 
though Rev. Hugh Peters sharply rebuked Gov- 
ernor Vane, and plainly hinted that if the civil 
authority would limit its action to " the things 
that are Caesar's," " the things that are God's " 
would go on much more quietly. 

The Court, having the matter under consider- 
ation, called for the opinion of the ministers. In 
the morning Mr. Cotton preached on the disput- 
ed points to general satisfaction. In the after- 
noon, Mr. Wilson made a lament over the dark 
and distracted condition of the churches, and the 
divisions occasioned by the newly broached 
opinions. At this speech, Mr. Cotton, with 
Governor Vane and others took deep offence, 
and called upon the pastor to retract his expres- 
sions. Mr. Wilson, supported by the firm hand 
of Governor Winthrop, declined to give the 
satisfaction required. The contention threat- 
ened to wax sharp between them : but at last the 
wisdom and gentleness of the two ministers 
calmed the murmurings and mutterings which 
were ready to burst forth in a storm of strife. 
The next time Mr. Wilson preached, he was so 
happy as to give contentmeni to all. 

As is usual in such cases, one error led on to 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 243 

another, heresy begat more heresy, and schism 
necessitated further schism. The ministers 
questioned Mr. Cotton on a variety of articles: 
and though most of his replies were satisfactory, 
others were not thought to be sufficiently ex- 
plicit and unequivocal. Expressions and phrases 
were weighed and dissected with astonishing 
scrupulosity. Though Mr. Cotton was not to 
be shaken from his honest belief, yet neither was 
he betrayed into rashness. 

A ship, with passengers, was about to sail for 
Endand. " Tell our transatlantic friends," said 
the teacher, " that all our strife is about magni- 
fying the grace of God. Some seek to exalt the 
grace of God towards us ; and some, the grace 
of God within us." Mr. Wilson, hurt at this, 
replied that he knew of neither elders nor breth- 
ren among their churches who did not labor to 
magnify the grace of God in respect to both jus- 
tification and sanctification, or the grace of God 
both toward us and within us. As the people 
understood the matter of difference, the pastor, 
according to the nature of his office, naturally 
insisted on sanctification as " the grace of God 
within us ;" or gracious works, and experimental 
godliness. And the teacher, as the nature of 



244 LIFEOF JOHN COTTON. 

his office might easily incline him, insisted more 
on justification, as the free grace of God towards 
us, pardoning us, not for our works or any thing 
in us, but solely for the sake of Christ. Each 
of these worthy divines was full in the faith of 
both these points : but to either point a relative 
importance was assigned by one of the ministers 
beyond w^hat the other would allow. Perhaps 
this unprofitable dispute was never better dis- 
posed of than by the excellent Rowland Hill, 
who once said in a sermon; — "If I were asked 
which I loved the most, justification or sanctifi- 
cation : — 1 would answer like the little children, 
when you ask them which they love best, father 
or mother ? They will tell you, ' I love them 
both best.'" 

At their session in March, 1637, Mr. Wheel- 
wright was tried before the General Court for a 
highly inflammatory sermon preached on a fast 
day. He was adjudged to be guilty of sedition 
and contempt of Court, though Governor Vane 
and a few others entered their protest. There 
was a reluctance to proceed to the passing of 
sentence. The case was deferred to the next 
Court, and Mr. Wheelwright was recommended 
to the care of the Boston church, which had in- 



LIFE OP JOHN COTTON. 245 

terposed a petition in his* behalf. Meanwhile 
the discussions between the ministers had nar- 
rowed the ground of controversy, till it was re- 
duced to a mere hair-line, of such fineness as to 
require the nicest sort of metaphysical eye-glasses 
to discern any room for further difference of 
opinion. 

When the Court was again convened, Mr. 
Wheelwright confronted his judges with all 
possible boldness. He and his partizans had 
been so insolent and violent, as to injure their 
cause : but they were encouraged by some new 
arrivals which brought fresh strength to the an- 
tinomian standard. Their fanatical zeal blazed 
out in all directions, with flaming extravagances 
which fired inflammable minds. Some were 
deranged with joys, and others with despair. 
The public excitement and distress was becom- 
ing intolerable. Days of fasting and prayer 
were observed with reference to the sad condition 
of affairs. 

At a conference of ministers and elders held 
on the 30th of July, harmony was restored be- 
tween Mr. Cotton and the other ministers : but 
Mr. Wheelwright, who was present, continued 
impracticable. 

21^ 



246 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

On the 30th of August, the first synod ever 
held in New England, was held at Cambridge. 
All the pastors, teachers and elders in the coun- 
try were present. They were boarded at the 
public charge, by which also was defrayed the 
traveling expenses of the members from the 
colony of Connecticut. This synod condemned 
eighty or more different errors, which had been 
set afloat in the community : Mr. Wheelwright 
remaining as pertinacious as ever. This con- 
demnation was signed by all the members, except 
Mr. Cotton, who appears to have scrupled at the 
condemnation of two of the points specified. 

On the 2d of November the General Court 
assembled at Cambridge. After their long for- 
bearance, finding all their attempts to reconcile 
Mr. Wheelwright unavailing, and feeling that 
a continuance of these dissensions absolutely 
endangered the existence of their little common- 
wealth, which was almost shaken to pieces 
thereby, they proceeded to banish him from 
iheir society. His sister, Mrs. Hutchinson, after 
a very singular trial of two days' duration, was 
also voted to be " unfit for their society," and 
required to leave it. Mr. Wheelwright went, 
with many of his followers, and founded the 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 247 

town and church of Exeter, N. H. From thence 
he soon after removed to Wells in Maine : and 
after five or six years' absence, he owned his er- 
rors, made his retraction, and was restored to a 
residence in Massachusetts. 

The unhappy woman who had fomented such 
a disturbance, after a short imprisonment, was 
set at liberty. But returning to her old course 
of agitation, she was summoned before the whole 
congregation on a lecture day, when her errors 
were enumerated and condemned, and a solemn 
admonition was read to her by Mr. Cotton, who ^ 
decidedly reproved the disposition of the woman 
who had once been his most ardent admirer. 

She then resided a while in Mr. Cotton's 
family, where he and Mr. Davenport labored to 
convince her, and bring her to repent of her er- 
rors. They so far prevailed with her, that she 
made a written recantation of most of her anti- 
nomian heresies ; but in language so equivocal, 
as failed to satisfy the church. In an oral ex- 
planation she made a general confession of her 
delusions, so humble and penitential, that they 
began to hope that she was really about to be 
reclaimed. But the moment they began to 
touch upon particular points, she became as wild 



248 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

as ever : and involved herself in such contradic- 
tions as amazed and alienated the last of her 
supporters and advocates. All hope in her fa- 
vor being now abandoned, a motion was made 
for her excommunication. The long-suffering 
church, feeling a lingering tenderness for their 
erring sister, and something of horror at the 
thought of passing that dread sentence, still hes- 
itated to take the step. At last, the resolution 
was adopted, and the gangrened limb was 
stricken from the body. 

After lingering with her friends awhile, she 
departed to an island in Narragansett Bay, which 
her husband and others had purchased of the 
Indians. Here they were ever starting some 
monstrous or foolish notion : — such as, that wo- 
men have no souls, that morality is antichrist, 
and that the devil and the Holy Ghost had an 
indwelling with every believer. Her husband 
dying about six years after, she again removed 
into the limits of the Dutch colony beyond New 
Haven. Here, in the following year, she came 
to the end of her earthly sorrows under the Mo- 
hawk scalping-knife. She perished with all her 
family of sixteen persons, except that one daugh- 
ter was carried into captivity. 



I 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 249 



This protracted controversy being thus brought 
to a close, Mr. Cotton found leisure to write a 
reply to a treatise which a Mr. Barnard in Eng- 
land had published against the mode of gathering 
the churches in this country. Mr. Cotton, in 
this year 1638, also replied to a defence of litur- 
gies by Mr. Ball. 

Thus this faithful soldier of the cross, ever 
valiant for the truth, had scarce panted through 
the toils of one sharp conflict, before he girded' 
himself for fresh encounters. And, doubtless, it 
was no small relief, to turn from the struggle 
within the camp to meet an adversary abroad. 



250 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON 



CHAPTER IX. 

Mr. Cotton's success in the ministry. His influence in the commu- 
nity. Instances. Women's vails. Independent spirit of the people. 
Instances. Morality of the colony. Mr. Cotton invited to return to 
England in 1641. Again next year to the Westminster Assembly. 
Congregationalists in the Assembly. Mr. Cotton declines going. 
Survey of the sum of Church Discipline. Otlier writings on the 
subject. Synod of 1643. Synod of 1646 — 8. Cambridge platform. 
Mr. Cotton in the family. Family altar. Sabbath keeping. T. 
Shepard. Letter to N. Rogers. Hospitality. Benevolence to 
Church of Segetea. Learning. Reading Calvin. Habits of study. 
Manner of preaching. Luther. Roger Clap. Fast days. Contro- 
versial writings. Correspondence, N. Rogers, O. Cromwell. 
Carlyle. Mr. Cotton's personal appearance. Pulpit delivery. Equa- 
nimity. Patience under abuse. Cause of his death. Last labors. 
Prepares to die. Closing scene. Funeral obsequies. Dwelling- 
house. Will. Houses of worship. Baptisms. Admissions to the 
church. Mr. Cotton's children. His grand-children. Ministers and 
preachers to the Indians. Children of Mr. Cotton who died before 
him. The Mothers. Mr. Cotton's widow. Woodbridge's elegy. 

After his troubles in connection with Mrs. 
Hutchinson's disturbances, which so afflicted him 
that he seriously meditated a retreat from the 
colony, Mr. Cotton passed the rest of his days in 
peace and high esteem. His labors in the pulpit 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 251 

and elsewhere were exceedingly great ; and the 
power of God mightily attended them, and 
crowned them to the conversion of numerous 
souls, and the edification of thousands. Under 
the wise counsels of the noble and devout Win- 
throp in the State, and those of Mr. Cotton in the 
Church, the community prospered to such a 
degree, as to make the grateful inhabitants apply 
to them the words of the Psalm , — " Thou leddest 
thy people like a flock by the hand of Moses and 
Aaron." 

Mr. Cotton knew how to touch the keys of 
the human heart, so as to draw out responsive 
and accordant notes. He played this complica- 
ted organ with a master's hand : and though he 
found it sometimes sadly out of tune, his skill 
would often blend the jarring sounds in surpris- 
ing harmony. The church which he governed, 
with one or two exceptions, so peacefully, was 
organized of very discordant materials. Many 
of the members were strongly inclined to most 
of the forms of the national church of England, 
in which they had been bred ; and others were 
speculative and adventurous reformers, who 
scarce knew how to be subject to any settled rule. 
But the patient sagacity of their teacher was 



252 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

marvelously successful in training them to hab- 
its of agreement and order. 

A few instances are recorded which may 
serve to show the extent of his influence. In 
1634, the people of Boston chose a committee for 
the division and distribution of the town lands, 
and purposely omitted to place any of the mag- 
istrates on the committee. Mr. Cotton soon 
persuaded them, that it was more according to 
order, to refer such affairs to the civil elders of 
their Israel. And so they unanimously agreed 
to go into a new election, agreeably to his views. 

In 1639, when the decays of their first rude 
place of worship, and the growth of the congre- 
gation, made it necessary to rear another, there 
arose a warm dispute as to the spot where it 
should stand. Their Teacher interfered with 
such success as to reconcile their opinions upon 
a point, which, above all others is apt to rend a 
congregation in sunder. The new edifice cost a 
thousand pounds, which this poor people cheer- 
fully paid, without assessment, by voluntary 
contri^^ution. 

At an election held in 1641, it was proposed, 
that two of the deputies, who had fallen into low 
circumstances, should be dropped in favor of 



/ 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 



253 



wealthier men. The Teacher, hearing of the 
project, generously, but prudently, condemned it 
at his next weekly lecture, in which he main- 
tained, that, if old and faithful officers had grown 
poor in the public service, instead of being dis- 
carded, they should be relieved at the public 
expense. The reproof was felt, and had its 
proper effect. 

In another case he proved that even the arbi- 
trary fashions of female apparel could not with- 
stand the weight of his solid counsels. Roger 
Williams and Mr. Skelton had persuaded the 
female part of their congregation at Salem, that 
it was a religious duty for all women to wear 
vails in public worship. Mr. Cotton went there 
to preach on the Lord's day. He was much 
struck at the oriental aspect of things in the 
congregation, so different from the customs of 
the English people : and in his forenoon instruc- 
tions, he effectually took the vail from off the 
understandings of the ladies, and so enlightened 
their minds thereby, that they all appeared in the 
afternoon without any vail upon their heads. 
And so that fashion passed away. 

But it would be the height of injustice to our 
free-spirited ancestors, to suppose that there was 
VOL. T. 22 



254 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

any thing servile in the profound deference they 
usually paid to the suggestions of their civil and 
ecclesiastical leaders. When occasion required, 
they were not slow to show a stubborn independ- 
ence with which it would not do to trifle. 
Thus in 1634, the people felt apprehensive, that, 
by re-electing Winthrop, they should make way 
for a Governor for life. Mr. Cotton, then at the 
height of his popularity, in a sermon before the 
General Court, on whom the choice devolved, 
taught ; " that a magistrate ought not to be turn- 
ed out without just cause, no more than a mag- 
istrate might turn out a private man from his 
freehold, without trial." No noise was raised 
about this dangerous doctrine ; but, at that same 
election, they turned out Winthrop, and put in 
Dudley. Next year they ousted Dudley, and 
put in Haynes. The year after, they left ofC 
Haynes, and put in Vane. And all by way of 
practically showing their dissent from the doc- 
trine, that an elective magistrate has any thing 
like a freehold tenure of his office. In 1639, 
the Governor and magistrate ventured to nomi- 
nate three persons to fill vacancies in their board; 
leaving the people, however, as they said, " to 
use their liberties according to their consciences." 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 



255 



And the people did use their liberties according 
to their consciences. They chose never a man 
of them. These were days, when " king Cau- 
cus " did not reign so despotically as now. 

Such instances, rightly considered, are equally 
honorable to all the parties. It shows that the 
extreme deference ordinarily paid to their lead- 
ing men, was not a blind and slavish submission; 
but a free and intelligent homage to their pre- 
eminent wisdom and worth. 

Such was the state of morals in those days, 
that of twelve hundred men under arms on a 
training day, not one was intoxicated, or guilty 
of profane language. Not long after this time, 
a sermon was preached in London, before both 
houses of parliament, the Lord Mayor and 
Aldermen of London, and the Westminster 
Assembly of Divines, constituting the most 
remarkable auditory which the world could then 
have brought together. In that sermon, the 
preacher said ;— " 1 have lived in a country 
where in seven years I never saw a beggar, nor 
heard an oath, nor looked upon a drunkard." 
That country was New England. In another 
place, additional testimony will be presented as 
to the high tone of morality in the first age of 
this country. 



256 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

Mr. Cotton was by no means forgotten in his 
native country. The times were coming, when 
"carousing cavaliers were turned to flight in 
every fight and skirmish," by " praying Puri- 
tans," those warriors of " iron grimness, stern as 
doom." It was about to be ascertained that solid 
" round-heads " were much too hard for empty 
" rattle-heads." The Long Parliament had be- 
gun to take matters in hand as parliaments had 
never done before. That persecuting power, 
which had banished from Britairi so many of 
the choice spirits of the land, was now broken ; 
and many of the wanderers were returning to 
their homes, while others were earnestly invited 
to avail themselves of the altered state of affairs. 
In 1641, a letter was addressed to Mr. Cotton 
and several other leading colonists, entreating 
them to return to the mother-country, and to 
take the part which would naturally fall to them, 
if there, in remodeling the institutions of the 
land. This letter was signed by the leading 
men in that great revolution, including Oliver 
Cromwell. It was even in contemplation to 
send over a ship expressly for him. 

The next year, Mr. Cotton was invited, with 
Mr. Hooker and Mr. Davenport, to repair to 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 257 

England, and partake in the labors of the famous 
Assembly of Divines at Westminster. Mr. 
Cotton and Mr. Davenport were at first disposed 
to comply with the invitation, but were dissuaded 
by Mr. Hooker. The latter was decidedly 
opposed to the measure. He probably foresaw, 
that the overwhelming preponderance of Pres- 
byterian members in that Assembly would prob- 
ably create great difficulty for any who were so 
fully committed in conscience and principle to 
the Congregational Way, as himself and his 
brethren here. There were in that Assembly, 
five Congregationalists, commonly distinguished 
as the " Dissenting Brethren." These, with 
some help from about as many more of lesser 
note, kept the whole Assembly at bay for long 
years of debate and toil. The great body of the 
members was deeply intent upon establishing a 
government by Presbyteries, Synods, and As- 
semblies, over all the churches of England, 
without any toleration of other sects. They 
labored in this work with immense vigor, having 
all the power of the Long Parliament to back 
them. But do what they would, the invincible 
" Dissenting Brethren " had the amazing ad- 
dress to embarrass all their attempts. It was long 
22^ 



2-5S LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

before they could effect any thing, except the 
preparation of the Catechisms, Confession of 
Faith, and such doctrinal articles, in which they 
all agreed. And when at last, with extreme 
difficulty, the Assembly had completed their 
complicated model of church-government, and 
had begun to get a part of the machinery into 
actual operation, it was too late ! All the wheels 
were broken at once, when Cromwell stamped 
with his heavy heel, and the Long Parliament 
vanished. 

Of that redoubtable " Five," were Dr. Good- 
win and Philip Nye, who knew of old what a 
perilous debater Mr. Cotton could be. Right 
glad would they have been, in those " wars of 
the Lord," to have had the aid of three champi- 
ons from New England. But these latter were, 
doubtless, better employed in completing and 
settling the work in which they were here 
engaged. Mr. Hooker and Mr. Cotton were 
then occupied in the preparation of " A Survey 
of the Sum of Church-Discipline." The first 
copy of this work was lost at sea by shipwreck 
on its way to England to be printed. Another 
copy had a happier passage, and was published 
at London in 1648. It is in two books ; of 



LIFE OP JOHN COTTON. 259 

which the first is by Mr. Hooker, and the other 
by Mr. Cotton. On tlie title-page first printed, 
the whole work is attributed to Mr. Hooker : 
from which it has happened that Mr. ^Cotton's 
share in it has escaped the notice of most of 
those who have spoken of it. This was a very 
important treatise in its day ; and it was edited 
and prefaced by Dr. Goodwin. The editor, 
alluding to the loss of the original copy, makes 
a remark upon it worth transcribing. " The 
destiny which hath attended this book, hath 
visited my thoughts with an apprehension of 
something like an omen to the cause itself: that 
after the overwhelming of it Aviih a flood of 
obloquies, and disadvantages, and misrepresen- 
tations, and injurious impressions cast out after, 
it, it misfht in the time which God alone hath 
put in his own power, be again emergent." He 
also compares the cause to seed-corn, which, if 
it fall to the ground and die, together with some 
of those who scatter it, shall at last bring forth 
much fruit. These presages seem to be in latter 
stages of fulfillment. For, though long depressed, 
and, in a manner buried, the principles of Con- 
gregationalism have never, since the primitive 
ages, spread so rapidly as of late years. 



260 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

Most of the ablest treatises which appeared in 
defence of those principles in the seventeenth 
century, went from New England. Mr. Cotton 
did more in this way than any of our divines : 
but valuable books were prepared by Hooker, 
Davenport, Stone, Allen, Shepard, Richard Ma- 
ther, Thompson, Welde, Norton, and others. 
This was the great controversy of their day. 
Our fathers studied it with care. There was 
scarcely a minister of note among them, who did 
not preach and publish upon it. They were far 
enough from setting the pattern for that spurious 
liberality, which is now so much in vogue, and 
which dreads to have any thing said or done 
about Congregationalism for fear of making it 
sectarian. 

In the year 1643, all the ministers in the 
country, to the number of fifty, assembled at 
Cambridge. " They sat in the college, and 
had their diet there after the manner of schol- 
ars' commons, but somewhat better, yet so 
ordered as it came not to above sixpence the 
meal for a person." This frugality is the most 
remarkable thing recorded of this synod. Mr. 
Cotton and Mr. Hooker were the moderators. 
The main business was, to dissuade the New- 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 261 

bury ministers, Thomas Parker and James 
Noyes, from attempting to introduce the Pres- 
byterian government in their church. 

While we are upon synods, we may as well 
speak of the most important meeting of the kind 
ever held in New England. It was convened 
at Cambridge late in 1646, under the auspices 
of the magistrates. After three sessions, the 
last of which terminated on the 28th of August, 
1648, they presented to the churches and the 
civil government, the celebrated " Cambridge 
Platform of Church Government." Having 
fully discussed the work, the General Court at 
its next meeting but one " thankfully accepted 
thereof, and declared their approbation of the 
said Platform of Discipline, as being, for the 
substance thereof, what they had hitherto prac- 
ticed in their churches, and did believe to be 
according to the Word of God." It thus re- 
ceived in Massachusetts the sanction of law : 
and indeed was adopted in all the New England 
colonies, Rhode Island excepted, till the Say- 
brook Platform was adopted in Connecticut sixty 
years after. I believe that the articles of faith 
in very many of our churches, expressly recog- 
nize the Cambridge Platform as presenting the 



262 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

principles of ecclesiastical order recognized and 
practiced by them. And yet if any one were to 
inquire how many, out of the thousands of 
members of those churches who have subscribed 
that declaration, have ever read the instrument 
referred to, the result would be, perhaps, more 
curious than gratifying. Less actual incon- 
venience, however, has resulted from the too 
general omission of the duty of examining this 
instrument, than might have been expected. 
The principles of Congregationalism are so few, 
simple and intelligible, that the people obtain 
some general understanding of them without 
much special effort. Still it would be far bet- 
ter, if the people who follow our system would 
read the book in which it is set forth, together 
with some of the valuable writings which have 
recently appeared on the same subject. 

But little novv remains to be considered, ex- 
cept what relates to the personal character and 
habits of Mr. Cotton. 

In the family, he " ruled well his own 
house ; " as became one who so well " ruled his 
own spirit." If any thing went amiss, he never 
corrected it in a passion : but, with great delib- 
eration, began by showing what precept of the 
Bible had been transgressed or disregarded. 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 263 

At the devotions of the family, morning and 
evening, he read a chapter, explaining and ap- 
plying the contents in a practical manner, but 
briefly. Before and after the reading, prayers 
were made, though very short and pertinent. 
He studied brevity in all : for he held, " that it 
was a thing inconvenient many ways to be 
tedious in family duties." 

The Sabbath he kept most conscientiously 
from evening to evening : and it is supposed to 
be from his example, that the custom prevailed 
so extensively in New England of " resting 
according to the commandment " at the going 
down of Saturday's sun. When that evening 
arrived, he made a larger exposition at family 
prayer than at other times. Then the children 
and servants were thoroughly exercised in the 
catechism, probably using such as were of his 
own preparation : one of which, called " Milk 
for Babes," was used for feeding the minds of 
the New England children for many years after 
his death. Another, called '* Meat for Strong 
Men," became their diet at a maturer age, 
" and nourished them up in the words of faith 
and of good doctrine." The catechising over, 
there followed prayer, and the singing of a 



264 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

psalm. Mr. Cotton then withdrew to his study, 
and its devotions, till the hour of repose. 

The next morning, after the customary family 
worship, he retired to his private communion 
with God, till he went to tlie house of God, and 
its public duties. Returning to his home about 
noon, he at once secluded himself in his oratory 
or study, into which there must be no intrusion, 
except for the purpose of carrying him a very 
slight repast. At the time for afternoon wor- 
ship, he came forth again, as one who had been 
holding converse with God in the mount of 
prayer. Coming back from the sanctuary, he 
first sought his retirement, and spent a season 
in closet prayer. He then prayed with his fam- 
ily ; after which each one of the household 
repeated as much as could be remembered of 
the sermons of the day. In those days, this 
was the common practice in all Puritan fami- 
lies. Almost every person was provided with a 
book for the purpose of taking notes : so that 
the congregation looked, as we should say, like 
an assembly of reporters. This repetition of 
sermons was thoroughly attended to : and happy 
was the youth who could give the most exact 
account of text, ajiplicalion, doctrine, divisions 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 265 

and uses. Almost the only relic of this instruc- 
tive custom which has come down to our day, 
is the practice, still preserved in some families, 
" of bringing home the text." While the good 
old usage was kept up, the want of Sabbath 
schools for the religious instruction of the young 
was not much felt. Or rather, there was a Sab- 
bath school, and that of the best kind, in every 
family. In Mr. Cotton's household, when the 
repeating of the sermons was finished, with all 
the remarks and little explanations and dis- 
cussions to which that exercise had given occa- 
sion, the evening meal was served up. After 
supper, another psalm was sung. Then the 
good man, lifting up his eyes and hands, would 
exclaim ; — " Blessed be God in Christ our 
Saviour ! " — and the Sabbath was done. Be- 
fore retiring to rest, he again, in his study, 
committed all that he had done to that God 
whom he " served with a pure conscience." 

The sanctification of the Lord's day was a 
very conspicuous trait of Puritan piety. Good 
Thomas Shepard, gives as a reason for migra- 
ting to this country, that he " saw the Lord 
departed from England when Mr. Hooker and 
Mr. Cotton were gone." That excellent man 
VOL. I. 23 



266 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

was extremely scrupulous in observing God's 
holy day. His preparations for the pulpit were 
commonly finished by two o'clock on Saturday 
afternoon ; in allusion to which, he once used 
these words ; — " God will curse that man's 
labors, that lumbers up and down in the world 
all the week, and then upon Saturday in the 
afternoon goes to his study ; when as God 
knows that time were little enough to pray in 
and weep in, and get his heart into a frame fit 
for the approaching Sabbath." This bears rather 
hard on those ministers who are sometimes de- 
scribed as " Saturday-afternoon-men." Such, if 
any such there be, may derive instruction from 
the following extract from a letter of Mr. Cot- 
ton's, written to Rev. Nathaniel Rogers in 
1630. " Studying for a sermon upon the Sab- 
bath day, so far as it might be any wearisome 
labor to invention or memory, I covet, when I 
can, willingly to prevent it : and would rather 
attend unto the quickening of my heart and 
affections, in the meditation of what I am to 
deliver. My reason is, much reading, and in- 
vention, and repetition of things, to commit 
them to memory, is a weariness to the flesh and 
spirit too ; whereas the Sabbath day doth rather 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 267 

invite unto an holy rest. But yet if God's 
providence have straitened my time in the week- 
days before, by concurrence of other business not 
to be avoided, I doubt not, but the Lord, who 
allowed the priests to employ their labor in kill- 
ing their sacrifices on the Sabbath day, will 
allow us to labor in our callings on the Sabbath, 
to prepare our sacrifice for the people." 

Mr. Cotton was always noted for his hospital- 
ity. The stranger and the needy were enter- 
tained at his table with a pastoral benignity. It 
was rare that his house was without a guest. 
It was a gospel inn. He used to say ; — " If a 
man want an heart for this charity, it is not fit 
such a man should be ordained a minister." 
While he lived in England, he was noted for 
his bounty to distressed ministers, many of whom 
were deprived by prelatical rigor of the means 
of subsistence before that rigor fell upon him. 
Many of the refugees who were driven from 
their flocks in Germany by the persecution then 
raging in the Palatinate of the Rhine, found a 
generous friend in him. Some of them were 
very eminent divines, who requited his kindness 
in Latin superlatives, the only coin the poor 



268 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

souls could spare. "^ To his generous practice 
there is recorded one of those exceptions which 
" proves the rule." It shall be given in the 
words of Mr. Whiting, who is speaking of Mr. 
Cotton's manner of living at Old Boston in Old 
England. " His heart and doors were open to 
receive, (as all that feared God, so) especially- 
godly ministers, which he most courteously en- 
tertained, and many other strangers besides. 
Only one minister, Mr. Hacket by name, which 
had got into the fellowship of famous Mr. Ar- 
thur Hildersham, with many other godly minis- 
ters, and being acquainted with their secrets, 
betrayed them into the prelate's hands : this 
man coming into Boston and meeting with Mr. 
Cotton, the good man had not the heart to speak 
to him, nor invite him to his house ; which, he 
said, he never did to any stranger that he knew 
of before, much less to any minister." 

Another instance in which Mr. Cotton showed 
himself to be one of those who " devise liberal 
things" occurred in 1651, while he was living in 
America. There was a little Congregational 



* la ihoir accounts of him, they styled him; — " Faiitor dociissi- 
mus, clarissimus, fidalissimus, plurimumve honorandus." 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 



269 



Church of exiled Puritans at Segetea in Bermu- 
da, of which Mr. Natlianiel White was pastor. 
Banished by their opposers, this little flock re- 
treated to one of the southern islands, a desolate 
spot where they suffered severe hardship. When 
the report reached Mr. Cotton, he exerted him- 
self to procure collections for their relief. Near 
eight hundred pounds was contributed by some 
six or eight of the poor churches in the Bay. 
A fourth part of the sum was gathered by the 
Boston Church, where there was but one sub- 
scription that equaled, and none that exceeded, 
Mr. Cotton's. The money was laid out in corn 
and other necessaries, and sent, by the hand of 
two brethren, in a small vessel hired for the 
purpose. It arrived at its destination, on the 
very day when the afflicted exiles had made a 
personal distribution of their last handful of 
meal, and had no prospect before them but that 
of speedily famishing to death. On that self- 
same day too, their believing pastor had preached 
upon that most suitable text ;— " The Lord is my 
Shepherd, I shall not want." The admiring 
€xiles could not sufficiently express their grati- 
tude for this timely succor from their New 
England friends. "For the administration of 
23*' 



270 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

this service not only supplied the want of the 
saints ; but is abundant also by many thanksgiv- 
ings to God;" 

In reviewing what his contemporaries have 
said of Mr. Cotton, we cannot but be struck with 
the high repute in which he was held for learn- 
ing. This was a quality in the absence of 
which, no minister in the days of the Puritans 
could command respect. A pious and learned 
ministry, our fathers considered to be a necessary 
of life. A Dutch scholar of distinction heard 
Mr. Cotton preach at Boston in Old England, 
and declared; — "that never in his life had he 
seen such a conjunction of learning and plain- 
ness as there was in the preaching of this wor- 
thy man." It was rare for him to allude to his 
own acquisitions ; but in the confidence of friend- 
ship, Mr. Cotton once said ; — " That he knew 
not of any difficult place in all the whole Bible, 
which he had not weighed somewhat unto satis- 
faction." He had an immense library for those 
days ; and an immense acquaintance with it. 
But his favorite author was one whose name is 
not apt to be spoken with commendation by 
" lips polite." Said Mr. Cotton ; — " I have 
read the fathers, and the schoolmen, and Calvin 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 



271 



too : but I find that he that has Calvin has them 
all." When asked in liis later days, why he 
indulo-ed himself in nocturnal studies more than 
formerly, he answered with a smile ; — " Because 
I love to sweeten my mouth with a piece of 
Calvin before I go to sleep." It is needless to 
ask what were the doctrinal sentiments of a man 
with such a moral taste as this. It is evident 
that he held to that Pauline system, which is 
properly the belief of minds naturally strong, or 
highly illuminated by the Spirit of grace. No 
person can be both an intelligent and ardent 
Calvinist, who has not either a profound and 
penetrating judgment, capable of grasping truths 
of the first magnitude ; or else a heart intensely 
excited and irresistibly led by that spiritual in- 
fluence, which the gospel describes as essential 
to salvation. 

The habits of Mr. Cotton, from youth to age, 
were those of an indefatigable student. He was 
an early riser, devoting the morning hours to 
closer application. In his later years, he ab- 
stained from any evening repast ; occupying the 
time appropriated to supper in reading, reflection 
and prayer. Having a vigorous constitution, 
his life and labors were happily prolonged by 



272 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

careful diet and regular living. He rarely 
needed any other doctor for the body. Dryden 
says : 

, " The first physicians by debauch were made ; 

Excess began, and sloth sustains the trade." 

He was " sparing of sleep, more sparing of 
words, but most sparing of time." His study 
was his paradise, which he never willingly left, 
except to do some good office. Unseasonable 
visitors, who consumed his precious time, he 
treated with all gentleness and urbanity : but 
after such an one had retired, he would say wiih 
some regret ; — " I had rather have given this 
man an handful of money, than have been kept 
thus long out of my study." He kept by him a 
sand-glass which ran for four hours : this turned 
over three times, measured his day's work. Of 
this no small part consisted in fervent prayer : 
for he held with Luther, that he who has prayed 
well, has studied well. 

In the manner of his preaching, Mr. Cotton 
was plain and perspicuous. He conscientiously 
forbore to make any display of his vast learning 
in the pulpit. He addressed himself to the 
common people. His chief anxiety was, to be 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 



273 



understood. He would often say, though apt to 
handle the deepest subjects ;— " I desire to 
speak so as to be understood by the meanest 
capacity." When an iron key would unlock 
the mystery of godliness better than a golden 
one, he preferred the cheaper, but more useful 
metal. The wish of his heart, was to glorify 
God, rather than to win commendation for hnn- 
self. At the end of all his manuscript discour- 
ses, he ever inserted this, or some similar 
phrase,—" For thy glory, God ! " In him, 
the fumes of the " odorous lamp " of science 
never dimmed the light of his piety. 

He commonly bestowed great labor upon his 
public discourses ; though he sometimes preached 
with very great effect when he had no prepara- 
tion or warning. Sometimes, as he was gomg 
to the pulpit, his text would open to him in a 
new and striking manner ; he would then un- 
fold it by the hour, expressing himself with 
such steadiness and precision, that the most 
critical of his hearers would not be aware that 
they were listening to an unstudied effort. 

In vindication of his plain and familiar way 
of preaching, Mr. Cotton would say ;— " If I 
preach more scholastically, then only the learn- 



274 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

ed, and not the unlearned, can so understand as 
to profit by me ; but if I preach plainly, then 
both the learned and unlearned will understand 
me, and so I shall profit all." He viewed the 
subject just as Martin Luther did, as he is 
reported to have expressed himself in his table 
talk. When Dr. Erasmus Albert was to preach 
before the prince-elector, Luther said to him ; — 
*' Let all your preaching be in the most simple 
and plainest manner : look not to the prince, 
but to the plain, simple, gross and unlearned 
people ; of which cloth the prince himself is 
also made. If I, in my preaching, should have 
regard to Philip Melanchthon, and other learned 
doctors, then should 1 work but little goodness. 
I preach in the simplest sort to the unskillful, 
and the same giveth content to all. Hebrew, 
Greek and Latin I spare, till we learned ones 
come together, as then we make it so curled and 
finical, that God himself wondereth at us." At 
another time, the stout reformer exclaimed ; — 
" When preachers come to me, to Melanchthon, 
to doctor Pommern, &c., then let them show 
their cunning, how learned they be ; — they 
shall be well put to their trumps. But to 
sprinkle out Hebrew, Greek and Latin in their 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 275 

public sermons, the same savoreth merely of 
pride, which agreeth neither with time nor 
place, nor is it pertinent. In the church, 
among the congregation, we ought to speak, as 
we use at home in the house, the plain mother- 
tongue, which every one understandeth, and is 
acquainted withal." 

Of the happy effect of Mr. Cotton's manner 
of preaching, we have a very pleasing and in- 
structive example in the autobiography of that 
worthy old soldier of Jesus Christ, Captain 
Roger Clap. Having spoken of his admission 
to the Church in Dorchester, at its formation in 
1630, he proceeds with the relation of his sub- 
sequent experience in religion. " Jesus Christ 
being clearly preached, and the way of coming 
to him by believing was plainly shown forth ; 
yet because many, in their Relations, spake of 
their great terrors and deep sense of their lost 
condition, and I could not so find, as others did, 
the time when God wrought the work of con- 
version in my soul, nor in many respects the 
manner thereof ; it caused in me much sadness 
of heart, and doubtings how it was with me, 
whether the work of grace were ever savingly 
wrought in my heart or no ? How lo cast off 



276 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

all hope, to say, and verily to believe that there 
was no work of grace wrought by God in my 
heart, this I could not do ; yet how to be in 
some measure assured thereof was my great 
concern. But hearing Mr. Cotton preach out 
of the Revelations, that Christ's Church did 
come out of great tribulation, he had such a 
passage as this in his sermon ; — ' That a small 
running Stream was much better than a great 
hand Flood of Water, though the Flood maketh 
the greatest Noise : so,^ saith he, ' A little con- 
stant Stream of godly Sorroiu, is better than 
great Horror.'' God spake to me by it, it was 
no little support unto me. And God helped me 
to hang on that text ; (and through his grace I 
will continue so to do,) namely, ' This is a faith- 
ful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that 
Jesus Christ came into the world to save sin- 
7iers.^ '"^ May the words of Mr. Cotton comfort 
some who read these pages, even as when they 
came with a blessing to that right old Puritan ! 
Besides his incessant preaching, and a large 
correspondence in which he was very usefully 



* Memoirs of Capt Roger Clap. Boston, 1731. Reprinted by 
David Clapp, Jr. 184 Washington street, 1844, p. 24. 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 277 



employed as a casuist, being expert in the solv- 
ing of cases of conscience, he was much engaged 
in extraordinary labors. In the frequent fast- 
days appointed by his Church in those troublous 
times, he would be engaged in prayer and 
preaching for five and six hours together. He 
would also keep many whole days of fasting by 
himself, occupying the time with humiliation of 
his soul and prayer. He also observed, as oc- 
casion prompted, entire days of private thanks- 
giving for special mercies received. 

Of all his more important publications, we 
have had occasion to speak in the course of this 
narrative. Most of them were called forth 
by the controversies which then agitated the 
Church on the subject of government and dis- 
cipline. They are remarkable for the mild 
Christian spirit which pervades them. " None 
will blame a man," says Thomas Fuller, " for 
arming his hands with hard and rough gloves, 
who is to meddle with briers and brambles." 
But though he had to deal with some of the 
most thorn-backed and scratching antagonists, 
they could not provoke him to anger. Though 
a most tenacious and vigorous maintainor of the 
truth, he never lost " the meekness and gentle- 
voL. I. 24 



278 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

ness " which he learned of his divine Master. 
" It may fairly be said that an amiable spirit in 
controversy forms one of the most incontroverti- 
ble evidences of elevated piety, because it is 
precisely this point in which so many men of 
indubitable excellence have failed." Good men 
have often debated, " as if personal invective, 
and embittering a style, were God's way of 
bettering a cause, or battering an opinion." As 
to the temper in which controversy should be 
conducted, Mr. Cotton may serve " as a pattern 
for all answerers to the world's end." Through 
the spirit in which he replied, he did like Job 
with the books of his adversaries, " and bound 
them as a crown to him." 

We have alluded to his extensive correspond- 
ence. But little of it has escaped the ravages 
of time. Among others, he maintained a friend- 
ly correspondence with archbishop Usher. As 
a sample of the manner in which he wrote 
familiarly to his pious friends, an extract is 
here given from a letter dated the ninth of 
March, 1631 ; and addressed to the reverend 
Nathaniel Rogers, who was afflicted with a very 
tedious and disheartening malady. '* I bless 
the Lord with you, who supporteth your feeble 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTOf^. 279 

body to do him service, and meanwhile perfect- 
eth the power of his grnce in your weakness. 
You know who said it, ' Unmortified strength 
posteth hard to liell, but sanctified weakness 
creepeth fast to heaven.' Let not your spirit 
faint, though your body do. Your soul is pre- 
cious in God's sight ; your hairs are numbered ; 
and the number and measure of your fainting 
fits, and wearisome nights, are weighed and 
limited by his hand, who hath given you his 
Lord Jesus Christ, to take upon him your in- 
firmities, and bear your sicknesses." 

Among other distinguished correspondents of 
Mr. Cotton's was one beyond comparison the 
greatest man of his time. The life of Oliver 
Cromwell is yet to be written. It has, as yet, 
been " attempted" only ; and that in the most 
murderous manner. For a considerable period 
after his death, it would have been regarded as 
high treason to have presented a true picture of 
his merits. And when, at last, the expulsion of 
the Stuarts left historians at liberty to do some 
justice to Cromwell's character, the age had be- 
come too degenerate to understand or appreciate 
the man. The materials for his history were 
only such as had been collected by his bitter 



280 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

foes : whose only study was to conceal every 
thing which could adorn his memory, and parade 
every thing which could be found or invented to 
blacken it. The present generation takes its 
idea of the man, either from Clarendon, who 
hated his politics ; or from Hume, who hated his 
religion ; or from inferior authors, who hated 
every thing about him. He is commonly re- 
garded as a person of extraordinary talent, but 
whose talent lay chiefly in the line of canting 
hypocrisy. His fame, however, is destined to 
emerge from the clouds which have so long 
obscured it. Whoever reads, with unprejudiced 
mind, the recent collection of his letters and 
speeches, wherein Cromwell speaks for himself 
in his own way, will feel a revolution in his 
opinions of the Protector. He possessed the 
very highest capacity for both military and civil 
affairs, ranking him among the very first of sol- 
diers and statesmen. To this he added a piety 
the most profound and unaffected, constantly and 
naturally pervading all language, whether on 
the most private or public occasions. He as- 
sumed the high station which he so ably filled, 
in obedience to what he felt to be a divine call, 
requiring of him what he alone could have ef- 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 2S1 



fected, — the preservation of the peace, liberty 
and religion of his distracted country. 

In Carlyle's collection we find the first of 
Cromwell's letters to Mr. Cotton, which was all 
written with the Protector's own hand. In con- 
nection with it, that strange " elucidator" re- 
marks in his own fantastic idiom as follows ; — 
" Reverend John Cotton is a man still held in 
some remembrance among our New England 
friends. A painful preacher, oracular of high 
gospels to New England ; who in his day was 
well seen to be connected with the Supreme 
Powers of this Universe, the word of him being 
as a live coal to the hearts of many." Carlyle 
supposes that Cotton had been writing to Oliver 
concerning some act of Parliament for propagat- 
ing the gospel in New England. This is a 
mistake. The Protector had written to Rev. 
William Hooke, who was Mr. Davenport's col- 
league at New Haven ; and who, a few years 
after was one of Oliver's chaplains. In his 
letter to Mr. Hooke, Oliver had sent loving and 
respectful salutations to Mr. Cotton. Mr. 
Hooke, whose wife was near of kin to Cromwell, 
intimated the message to Mr. Cotton, with the 
suggestion that a letter from him to the Protec^ 
24* 



282 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

tor would be taken in good part. Mr. Cotton 
accordingly wrote a letter of some length, which 
is preserved in Hutchinson's Collection. It is 
occupied, after the manner of a solution of a case 
of conscience, with a cautious vindication of 
Cromwell's policy, especially in the matters 
of dosing the Long Parliament with " Pride's 
purge," and demanding justice upon the head of 
a perjured and traitorous king. Mr. Cotton, 
having summed up the considerations belonging 
to the case in a manner accordant with the 
views which Cromwell himself appears to have 
taken of it, goes on to say; — " These things are 
so clear to mine own apprehension, that I am 
fully satisfied, that you have all this while fought 
the Lord's battles, and the Lord hath owned 
you, and honored himself in you, in all your 
expeditions ; which maketh my poor prayers the 
more serious, and faithful, and affectionate, (as 
God helpeth,) in your behalf." This letter is 
dated the twenty-seventh of May, 1651. Crom- 
well's reply is dated the second of October fol- 
lowing. It owns, as Carlyle says, " Their gen- 
eral relationship as Soldier of the gospel and 
Priest of the gospel, high brother and humble 
one ; appointed, both of them, to fight for it to 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 283 

the death, each with such weapons as were 
given him."->'= Other letters, now lost, passed 
between them. 

In stature, Mr. Cotton was rather low, and 
slightly inclined to be robust. He had a fair 
complexion, and ruddy countenance : and his 
locks, which were naturally brown, in his later 
life had a snowy whiteness, which, as " a crown 
of glory" made our patriarch's aspect venerable 
to behold. There was an inexpressible majesty 
in his mien, which compelled the respect of all 
who approached him : and the voice of profane- 
ness was hushed when he was by. The inn- 
keeper at Derby, where Mr. Cotton often visited 
while he dwelt in England, used to tell his com- 
panions that he wished that man were out of his 
house, for he was not able to swear with him 
under his roof. 

His voice was not strong ; but clear and dis- 
tinct, and heard with ease in the largest assem- 
blies. He delivered himself in the pulpit with 
much dignity, using a natural and becoming 
gesture of the right hand. But such a divine 
power and holy unction attended his grave and 



* Oliver Cromwell's Letlers and Speeches, Letter CXXV. 



284 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

earnest manner, that Mr. Wilson said of him ; — 
" Mr. Cotton preaches with such authority, 
demonstration and life, that methinks, when he 
preaches out of any prophet or apostle, I hear 
not him ; I hear that very prophet and apostle : 
yea, I hear the Lord Jesus Christ himself speak- 
ing in my heart." this is the true Christian 
eloquence, when the lips of the ambassador seem 
to breathe the very words of the Lord of life and 
salvation ! 

He had an almost miraculous evenness of 
vemper. No insult could disturb his self-pos- 
lession. Such was the meekness and mildness 
Df his disposition, that Mr. Norton used to regard 
him as the Moses and Melanchthon of the new 
world. In the words of that good old puritan, 
Simeon Ashe, " he was a dwarf in regard of 
humility, but a giant in regard of strength." 
Though but a lamb in his own cause, like his 
master, he was a lion in that of God and his 
church. His gentleness had nothing about it, 
either nerveless or cowardly. His chief services 
in behalf of the truth he loved were ever marked 
by a modest estimation of himself. " The high- 
est flames," says Jeremy Taylor, " are the most 
tremulous : and so are the most holy and emi- 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 295 

nently religious persons more full of awfulness, 
and fear, and modesty, and humility." Mr. 
Williams, when his adversary, candidly owned 
the goodness of his heart, and commended his 
attachment to the truths of the gospel. Mr. 
Cotton once said to a confidential friend ; — 
" Angry men have an advantage above me : the 
people dare not set themselves against such men, 
because they know it will not be borne ; but some 
care not what they say or do about me, because 
they know I will not be angry with them again." 
As a specimen of the manner in which he 
met abusive treatment, we are told, that he was 
once /ollowed from the church to his home by a 
peevish, complaining hearer, who tried to pro- 
voke him by telling him, that his preaching had 
latterly become either very dark, or very flat. 
To this he mildly answered, " Both, brother, it 
may be, both : let me have your prayers that it 
may be otherwise." 

On another occasion a very ordinary sort of 
a man had boasted of his clear insight into the 
book of Revelation. Mr. Cotton modestly re- 
plied ;— " Well, I must confess that I want light 
in those mysteries." Upon this, the man sent 
him by a servant a pound of candles. The good 



236 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

minister received this piece of impudence with 
a silent smile ; revenging himself only by a 
christian taciturnity. Mather, relating the cir- 
cumstance in his magniloquent style, remarks ; — 
" Mr. Cotton would not set the beacon of his 
great soul on fire, at the landing of such a little 
cock-boat." 

The excellent Mr. Flavel relates an incident 
of this kind. While Mr. Cotton lived at Boston 
in old England, he was seen passing along the 
street, by some gay young fellows, who had been 
at the tavern, indulging in that, which Solomon 
says, is a mocker : and is never more so than 
when it makes mockers of those who use it. 
One of them says to his companions ; — " I will 
go and put a trick upon old Cotton." Crossing 
over to the reverend and holy man, he whispered 
in his ear ; — " Cotton, thou art an old fool." 
That good man, without the slightest irritation, 
looked mildly at him, and replied; — " I confess 
I am so : the Lord make both me and thee wiser 
than we are, even wise unto salvation." Re- 
turning abashed to his companions, the wanton 
insulter told them of this meek reply, which 
sobered for that time their intemperate mirth, 
and perhaps first taught them "how awful good- 
ness is." 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 287 

These examples provoke a sort of impatience, 
that more of his expressions have not been pre- 
served. We are sure that he daily uttered such 
instructive dictates of a mind, adorned with un- 
affected humility, singularly refined from the 
dross of earthly passions, and mellowed to a 
sweet maturity of grace by the ripening warmth 
of close communion with the Lamb of God. 

The labors of Mr. Cotton were hastening to 
a close, by exposure to wet in passing the ferry 
to Cambridge, where he went to preach to the 
students. This sermon was from Isaiah 54: 13. 
" And all of thy children shall be taught of the 
Lord.'! Among those who heard it, was Increase 
Mather, then a young scholar, and in after life 
married to Mr. Cotton's only surviving daughter. 
Dr. Mather never forgot the impressions made 
upon his mind by that discourse. His powers of 
utterance failed while speaking. He was attack- 
ed with inflammation of the lungs, became asth- 
matic, and was seized by a complicated disease, 
which he felt as a warning that his end drew 
nigh. 

The next Sabbath he took for his text tne last 
four verses of the second epistle to Timothy, on 
which epistle he had been expounding in course. 



288 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

He told his auditory the reason of his taking so 
many verses at once ; — " Because else," said he, 
" I shall not live to make an end of this epistle." 
On the following Sabbath, being the twenty-fifth 
of November, he delivered his last sermon with 
much difficulty, on John 1 : 14, on the glory of 
Christ, "from the faith to the sight of which he 
was hastening." He had the feelings of another 
of the non-conforming divines, who said ; — " If 
I must be idle, I had rather be idle under ground, 
than above ground." He chose rather to be 
dead, than live dead ; having ofien expressed a 
wish that he " might not outlive his work." 

This duty done, Mr. Cotton spent one day in 
his study, in special prayer and preparation for 
the last great conflict which he was assured was 
at hand. On leaving that beloved and familiar 
apartment, he remarked to his consort ; — " I 
shall go into that room no more ! " He now 
betook himself to the couch, where he expected 
" the mercy-stroke of death," the blow that must 
shatter the last link with which sin or sorrow 
could fetter his soul. Although his foretastes 
and promises of heaven chiefly attracted him 
thitherward, he declared that it greatly contribu- 
ted to his readiness to depart, when he consid- 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 289 

ered the company of saints, so many of whom 
he had known and dearly loved, in whose com- 
munion he was shortly to mingle. 

Magistrates, clergymen, and private Christians 
in great numbers resorted to his sick-bed, mourn- 
fully listening to his dying counsels. Mr. Dun- 
ster, at that time President of Harvard College, 
with many tears besought his blessing, saying ; 
" I know in my heart, they whom you bless 
shall be blessed." Shortly before his death, Mr. 
Cotton sent for the elders of the church, who 
prayed over him. He exhorted them to feed the 
flock of which they were overseers, and to watch 
against those declensions to which he saw that 
professors of religion were tending. He added; — 
" I have now, through grace, been more than 
forty years a servant unto the Lord Jesus Christ, 
and have ever found him a good master." 
When his colleague, Mr. Wilson, a man who 
abounded in love as much as Mr. Cotton did in 
light, took his last leave, he breathed an ardent 
wish that God would lift up the light of his 
countenance upon the dying man ; he promptly 
replied ; — " God hath done it already, brother !" 
He then called for his children to whom he left 
the covenant of God as their chief portion. 

VOL. T. 2'5 



290 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

Having settled all his affairs, and taken leave of 
the world, he begged to be left alone for the 
little time he had to live, that his soul might be 
undisturbed in communing with his God. He 
caused the curtains to be drawn, and exacted a 
promise of the gentleman who attended him, 
that the privacy of his chamber should not be 
interrupted. Then reminding that gentleman, 
who was a beloved member of his church, of 
that promise, he gave him this parting benedic- 
tion ; — " The God that made you, and bought 
you with a great price, redeem your body and 
soul unto himself!" These were the last words 
he was heard to utter. After a few speechless 
hours, he quietly breathed out his spirit into the 
hands of Him who gave it. This gentle trans- 
lation of his soul from earth to heaven, took 
place shortly after eleven o'clock of Thursday 
morning, the twenty-third of December, 1652, in 
the sixty-eighth year of his age. On the twen- 
ty-eighth of the same month, he was honorably 
interred by a mourning concourse of the people, 
among whom he had ministered in holy things 
for more than nineteen years. He was borne on 
the shoulders of his brother-ministers to his last 
sleeping place, in a tomb of brick, in what is 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 291 

called the " Chapel Burying Ground." A deep 
and sincere mourning' was made for him by his 
afflicted flock, with whom all the scattered 
churches of New England joined their sorrows ; 
and numerous elegies, according to the taste of 
the times, recorded the general grief. The lec- 
tures in his church during the following winter, 
preached, as they were by the neighboring cler- 
gymen, were but so many funeral discourses. In 
the first of them, by his old friend and fellow- 
laborer and fellow-sufferer, Richard Mather of 
Dorchester, he gave the following counsel to the 
church ; — "Let us pray that God would raise up 
some Eleazer to succeed this Aaron : but you 
can hardly expect, that so large a portion of the 
Spirit of God should dwell in any one, as dwelt 
in this blessed man." His departure was la- 
mented as a public loss in all the churches of the 
country. In particular, Mr. Davenport most 
tenderly bewailed it in a sermon at New Haven, 
from the w^ords; — " I am distressed for thee, my 
brother, very pleasant hast thou been unto me." 
The south part of Mr. Cotton's dwelling- 
house was built by Sir Henry Vane, who 
boarded there with him till Sir Henry returned 
to England, first giving that addition to Sea- 
born Cotton. It stood on the lot south of 



292 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

what was lately the estate of Gardner Green, 
Esq. ; and was part of the ground now occu- 
pied by the " Tremont Row," nearly opposite 
to the Savings Bank. That rise of ground 
long bore the name of "Cotton's Hill." His 
house was still standing, then the oldest house 
in Boston, some twenty years ago. The inven- 
tory of his estate amounted to one thousand and 
thirty-four pounds, four shillings. His will pro- 
vided, that, in certain contingencies, half of his 
estate should go to Harvard College, aj^d half to 
support the free school in Boston. Those con- 
tingencies never happened : but the provision 
made for them evinces his deep interest in the 
important work of education. To the Church 
he bequeathed a piece of silver plate to be used 
at the communion table, where at his first com- 
ing he had made use of wooden chalices. This 
reminds us of the lament uttered by one of the 
writers in the middle ages, who sighs for those 
days of primitive piety, when the church in her 
poverty had wooden cups, but golden priests : 
but now, alas ! he cries, we have golden chalices 
and wooden priests. 

The first place of worship in which he here 
officiated, and which was the first ever erected 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 293 

to God upon this peninsula, stood in what is in 
these republican days State street, but in those 
monarchal times was King's Street. It was 
built in 1632. There are lovers of liturgic 
pomp, who cannot feel the spirit of devotion un- 
less awakened by columned aisles, and stained 
windows, and splendid altars, and sacred vest- 
ments, and responsive readings, and resounding 
organs, and choral chants. Such worshipers, 
as it has been forcibly said, " seem to have no 
idea of the Supreme Being but as a Grand Mas- 
ter of ceremonies to the whole universe." They 
would have scorned the adorations of that mud- 
walled edifice, with its lowly roof of thatch, 
where, for eight years of sadness, Wilson and 
Cotton, with their exiled flock, worshiped in 
spirit and in truth the Father w^ho " seeketh 
such to worship him." Let that humble struc- 
ture be commemorated with those wattled tem- 
ples, in which the first converts to Christianity 
among our British sires, who dwelt in what was 
then a land as savage and heathen as was this, 
before the pilgrims came, sang high praises to the 
babe that was laid in the manger at Bethlehem. 
The second house of worship was built in 
what is now called Cornhill Square in 1640. 
25=^ 



294 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

After standing for seventy-one years, it was re- 
built in Cornhill Square in 1712. After the 
lapse of near a century, the First Church re- 
moved, and built the present meeting-house in 
Chauncy Place. Oh, who that passes by that 
venerated sanctuary, can refrain from calling to 
mind that holy and apostolic succession of men 
of God, from the warm-hearted Wilson to the 
orthodox and eloquent Foxcroft, who have min- 
istered to that famous Church, and the multi- 
tude of its sainted dead ? And who that reflects 
upon the fearful falling away of that assembly 
from the faith of their fathers, can suppress the 
lamentation of the prophet ; — " How is the gold 
become dim ! how is the most fine gold changed !" 
During the nineteen years and more, that Mr. 
Cotton presided in that Church, one thousand 
and thirty-four children received the seal of bap- 
tism. Of these four hundred and fifty-six were 
females ; and five hundred and thirty-eight were 
males, being a large excess in favor of the latter. 
The number of baptisms in each year, exceeded 
fifty. On this duty of sealing the children of 
the covenant, and placing Christ's mark upon 
the lambs of his flock, the teacher laid great 
stress, and imparted much instruction, some 
part of which remains in print. 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 295 

During the same period, there were admitted to 
the Church, three hundred and six men, and three 
hundred and forty-three women : in all six hun- 
dred and forty-nine, being an average of thirty- 
four admissions in each year. Seventeen persons 
had been publicly admonished for different offen- 
ces ; and five of them who could not be reclaimed, 
were cut ofTby excommunication. Considering 
the numbers of the Church, and the strictness of 
the watch and discipline then maintained, so 
small a number of ecclesiastical censures argues 
great purity and blamelessness on the part of the 
members at large. 

Mr. Cotton had three sons and as many 
daughters ; all by his second wife. Seaborn 
Cotton, his oldest child, graduated at Harvard 
College in 1651. He was ordained the second 
minister of Hampton in New Hampshire, in 
1660, where he spent his days in gfeat useful- 
ness and honor. He died the nineteenth of 
April, 1686, aged fifty-two years. He was suc- 
ceeded by his own son, John Cotton, who also 
died there at the same age of fifty-two. 

The second son of the patriarch of Boston, 

John Cotton the younger, graduated at Harvard 

"College in 1657. For several years he preached 



296 LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 

to the Indians at Martha's Vineyard, in their 
own language. He was ordained at Plymouth 
in 1669, and labored there in the ministry with 
great diligence and success for thirty years, both 
among the whites and Indians. In his fifty- 
ninth year he removed to Charleston, South 
Carolina, where he gathered the Congregational 
Church, which still exists, and is one of the 
principal churches in that city. He died in less 
than a year after, on the eighteenth of Septem- 
ber, 1669. His son, Roland Cotton, graduated 
at Harvard in 16So, and was ordained the first 
minister of Sandwich, Massachusetts, in 1694. 
He also preached to the Marshpee Indians, of 
whom, in 1693, two hundred and fourteen were 
under his care, while five hundred others in the 
neighborhood of Plymouth were under the care 
of his father. Roland Cotton died at Sandwich 
in 1722. He had a brother, Josiah Cotton, who 
graduated at Harvard in 1698. He was Clerk 
of Court, Register of Deeds, and Judge of the 
Common Pleas. He also preached to the In- 
dians, at five difl^erent stations, for nearly forty 
years. He died the nineteenth of August, 1756, 
aged seventy-five. Three other brothers of Ro- 
land and Josiah were ministers. Roland had" 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 297 

three sons who were ministers of repute, John 
Cotton at Newton, Nathaniel Cotton of Bristol, 
and Ward Cotton of Boylston. Josiah Cotton 
of Plymouth had a son John, who was the first 
minister of Halifax. 

There have been many other descendants of 
the Boston minister, who have inherited his 
name and calling. In him there was a fulfill- 
ment of the promise ;— " My Spirit that is upon 
thee, and my words which I have put in thy 
mouth, shall not depart out of thy mouth, nor 
out of the mouth of thy seed, nor out of the 
mouth of thy seed's seed, saith the Lord, from 
henceforth and forever." It may be said of the 
posterity of very many of the pious settlers of 
this "New English Canaan ;"—" Their seed 
shall be known among the Gentiles, and their 
offspring among the people : all that see them 
shall acknowledge them, that they are the seed 
which the Lord hath blessed." 

But we must revert to the immediate family 
of the venerable saint of Boston. His youngest 
son, Roland, and his oldest daughter, Sarah, 
died nearly at the same time, at an early age, of 
the small pox, which raged in Boston in 1649. 
Sarah died on the twentieth of November. Her 



298 LIFE OF JOHN COTTb^N. 

last words to her parents were ; — " Pray, my 
dear father, let me now go home." In a few 
lines of his we find the following language of 
pious acquiescence in this affecting wish ; — 

" Go then, sweet Sara, take thy Sabbath rest, 
With thy great Lord, and all in heaven, blest." 

Roland died nine days after his sister, on 
which sad occasion, the submissive father again 
vented his feelings in his antiquated measures. 

"Suffer, saith Christ, your little ones, 

To come forth, rae unto, 
For of such ones my kingdom is. 

Of grace and glory too. 
We do not only suffer them, 

But offer them to thee ; 
Now, blessed Lord, let us believe, 

Accepted that they be." 

Of Mr. Cotton's younger daughters, one was 
married to a respectable merchant by the name 
of Egginton, but did not long survive the birth 
of her only child. The child also in a few 
years followed the mother to the grave. The 
other daughter of Mr. Cotton became the wife 
of Increase Mather, D. D., one of the most use- 
ful men to Massachusetts whom that " mother 
of great men " has ever produced. Through 
Mrs. Mather, her father became the ancestor of 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 



299 



several of the most distinguished ministers of 
the country. His celebrated grandson, Cotton 
Mather, in our days so grossly slandered and 
maligned, has noticed an interesting fact in re- 
gard to the second, or Old North Church in 
Boston. The formation of this church, in 1649, 
appeared to be quite detrimental to the inter- 
ests of Mr. Cotton ; and yet he cheerfully en- 
couraged the undertaking, because it seemed to 
be required by the interests of religion. Now, 
of that very church, his son-in-law was pastor 
above threescore years, and his grandson for 
foriy-four. 

Mr. Cotion's \vidow became the second wife 
of Rev. Richard Mather of Dorchester, the father 
of her son-in-law, to whom she thus became a 
parent by a double affinity. She survived her 
second husband, with whom she lived in great 
happiness for many years. 

We thus close our account of John Cotton, 
and those connected with him. That star rose 
brightly on the older England, and rode through 
stormy skies. But it sweetly shed hs parting 
rays on the newer England, at its serene and 
unclouded setting. We close with the following 
extract from his funeral elegy, by Benjamin 



300 



LIFE OF JOHN COTTON. 



Woodbnd.e, D D., which, doubtless^T^ed 
to the philosophic printer, Dr. Franklin, the hint 
01 His famous epitaph upon himself;— 

"A living, breathing Bible; tables where 

Best covenants at large engraven were ; 
Gospel and law in his heart had each its column : 

H,s head an index to the sacred volume; 
His very name a title-page ; and next 

His life a commentary on the text. 
O what a monument of glorious worth, 

When in a new edition he comes forth 
\^ iihout erratas, may we think he'U be.' 
In leaves and covers of eternity. 




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